According to Dr Simon Thornley, NZ should move to alert level 2 on April 22.
"Lockdown was appropriate when there was so little data…but the data is now clear, this is not the disaster we feared and prepared for. Elimination of this virus is likely not achievable and is not necessary."
Thornley said the risk to most working people was low and likened it, for most people, to a seasonal influenza virus.
He said the plan was developed amid concern the Government's strategy was over-the-top and likely to 'substantially harm the nation's long term health and well being, social fabric, economy and education'".
That is remarkably similar to what Dr Knut Kittkowski has said.
"We had two other SARS viruses before. Or, coronaviruses. It’s not the first coronavirus that comes out, and it won’t be the last. And for all respiratory diseases, we have the same type of an epidemic. If you leave it alone, it comes for two weeks, it peaks, and it goes for two weeks and it’s gone…There are no indications that this flu is fundamentally different from every other flu. We know what happened in China, we know what happened in South Korea, we know what happened, or is happening, in Europe. There are no indications that anything is different from a regular flu. Maybe it’s a bit worse than other flus—could be?
Surveys show NZrs are quite happy to be in lockdown, and ok to extend if necessary. There are also indications the virus is not like the seasonal flu, it's stronger, confusing, and very, very contagious. Of course you'll find scientists who disagree, such is the nature of scientists, lucky we have leaders here in NZ who don't want to risk peoples lives, because what they have seen in China, South Korea and, Europe.
The other thought I might have gone with is none of them have ever done anything useful or helpful in their lives until now, why break the habit of a lifetime.
Gareth Morgan's stooge huh? That makes sense with using lowball negotiation tactics during a medical crisis (speculatively):
A businessman wants money and doesn't care if others die because they can afford to continue to self-isolate and teleconference. But needs the lockdown to reduce to level 3 for at least a couple of weeks for their current trading positions to pay off. So they hire (donate to associated research/ treatment facilities) a more plausible academic to front for them and say that we should really be at level 2 or less of a lockdown.
The temptation is for people with no specialist knowledge to try to reconcile the conflicting claims of; some doctors saying level 4, while others call for level 2. Level 3 would seem to be an appropriate compromise then, if you weren't aware of how you were being played!
And of course, once there are a rash of new outbreaks within a month, and we return to level 4; the businessman would have had opportunity to trade their assets into a more personal favourable pattern. The Dr stooge should really be considering if what he has got from this deal is really worth his reputation as a health expert, or human being!
One is that Gareth Morgan seems to have been referencing a model from Pharmac Cost Utility Analysis which uses the number $10k at some point. I've scanned it but there is a lot more to it than some reductionist 'value of a human life' number.
These sorts of technical analysis' that appear to put a cold number on the value of a human life are always unattractive from a purely ethical perspective, but in effect are really just one way to ration otherwise limited resources. For instance if Pharmac hypothetically spent a large amount saving the lives of a few dozen cancer sufferers, while not spending the same sum on reducing pain and suffering for thousands of others … how to reconcile this competing demand in a manner that can be justified to the public?
If we just left the exercise to 'medical experts' they would do a wonderful job in their own domain, but anything else would suffer. This is the argument that we need to have, doctors and epidemiologists are not economists or business people … nor are they government.
The religious argument, which is my starting point, says that the value of human life transcends the economic one. My view is that all life is in it's own degree is sacred. Utilitarian arguments that place a dollar value on life is a fatal compromise with this principle.
Yet we cannot piously sit above the fray and not get our hands dirty; decisions made in the harsh light of scarcity must be made. Just as doctors in the ICU wards have to play God over who dies and who doesn't, we have to decide how much of our economy we must sacrifice to this virus.
Because at the extreme, if we crash the economy totally we all die from deprivation anyhow. So at some point well before that we will be forced to make a decision on how to end this lockdown, and on what criteria. Economic speakers like Morgan will necessarily fight the economy’s corner … and with sound moral justification. Just as people here fighting the corner for those vulnerable to this demon virus, will also claim the moral high ground.
Accusing each other of bad faith at the outset isn't going to progress the necessary discussion helpfully. We have a puzzle in front of us, how to extract ourselves from this lockdown. Getting into it was easy, and now we have a massive sunk cost invested in it … getting out will be much harder and demand the very best of all New Zealanders.
1/ Morgan is conflating pharmac's budgetary restrictions with the value of a human life.
2/ Economic collapse will lead to social problems (putting that very mildly).
Lots of words to wade through there, so wanted to confirm before critiquing. My immediate reaction was in regards to your equating human worth to spirituality:
Do atheists who are completely unconvinced by religious doctrine not then have any value? What about people who follow a different religion? Many of those have an "it's not a sin to kill and steal from unbelievers" clause in their tenets. I would argue these assumptions underly the colonial era horrors in Aotearoa (and much of the rest of the world).
Research shows that children bought up religious, have less empathy for others, and are more likely to despise those outside their religious/social group.
Morgan thinks it is the "economy", that pays Souxie.
No.
It's the market gardener who grows her food, the drivers, supermarket workers and food factory workers that supply her food.
It's the builder who built her house, the technicians, who make things she uses, the Bangladeshi that makes her clothes.
The Teachers who helped educate her, the Doctors that kept her healthy, the council workers that keep up fresh water, sewage disposal and drainage supplies.
Using the word 'religion' always gets a reaction from the determined 'non-religious' types that I don't care to wade into. This is not the forum to explore that theme.
Let me confine my answer to this; the idea that 'all life is sacred' finds it's most deep seated and durable home in the religious context. That does not exclude other moral systems, nor denigrates them without cause.
Many of those have an "it's not a sin to kill and steal from unbelievers" clause in their tenets.
1/ Morgan is conflating pharmac's budgetary restrictions with the value of a human life.
Referencing Pharmac seems like a pertinent gambit in the context of the debate he's engaged in, but it's probably a mistake to put the man into box based on one short tweet.
Thanks RL, couldn't be bothered researching Morgan's foolishness myself.
Going out on a limb, it seems to me that he half-assed it to make two fundamental errors:
Pharmac does not, in fact, set a value on human life. It does factor cost into the equation as part of the calculation used to prioritise the costs and benefits of relative funding options. As your link says:
Does PHARMAC use a cost per QALY threshold?
No. CUA helps us rank funding options, so that we focus our work on the medicines offering the best health outcomes for New Zealand. We measure value by using nine decision criteria – a key reason why the results of CUA are not any sort of threshold. A threshold is also incompatible with a fixed budget – however big – because we could never guarantee to fund everything that met a threshold.
He seems to have half-remembered a ballpark range of common costs for medications as $10,000 per life, rather than $10,000 per quality-adjusted life-year. So it's not $10k/life, Pharmac happens to get many of its common medications at roughly $10k (give or take several thousand) per year for each healthy, happy person or a composite number of slightly more health but still sick, slightly more happy people.
Dude still hasn't learned that you can't write public policy on the back of an envelope.
Yeah. That looks like a good summary. That Pharmac CUA document is well laid out, and it makes a nuanced argument illustrating some of the very real challenges faced in running a health system. Sometimes I think we should be just a little more appreciative that our public service does function better than OK most of the time.
As for Morgan, on his humanitarian track record going back decades we know he's a decent guy, but who among us hasn't made mistakes in the course of a fast moving thread?
Going by his NZ track record, his actual persona is most people's online-at-three-in-the-morning-after-a-few-drinks persona: when his unchecked recollections or his graciously gifted reckons are challenged, he spits the dummy.
At least Ardern becoming PM made that pig eat his lipstick.
Was it about halfway to the 5% threshold that TOP got last election? Anyone here think that a Bridges/ Morgan government would have responded better to the Pandemic than our present one?
Thornley and Wittkowski appear to be arguing for letting the disease run rampant through the ranks of the vulnerable, and appear to be meh about the idea of overloading the health system and subsequent damage that would cause. But haven't get the courage to explicitly spell that out.
They appear to be dishonestly downplaying the seriousness of COVID-19 by comparing it to regular seasonal flu. IT’S NOT THE FUCKING FLU, IT'S WAY MORE SERIOUS;. I’ve got family that have personally experienced COVID-19 and are working on the frontlines of dealing with it that are corroborating the media reports of how damaging it is. IT’S NOT A FUCKING MEDIA BEATUP.
The choice of when to drop down in alert levels and open up restrictions comes down to balancing the extra marginal problems caused by staying at higher levels for a bit longer versus the risk of having to go back into higher levels because of a subsequent breakout. Seems to me the marginal extra problems caused by extending the lockdown by another week or two are really quite small, especially relative to the problems caused by having to go back into lockdown in the future.
Given what we know about asymptomatic carriers being infectious for maybe a couple of weeks, it would only take a chain of two or three asymptomatic infections to carry the disease undetected through the four week lockdwon. Considering how many infections we know about, the chances of undetected asymptomatic chains seem awfully high. Each one of which could cause a fresh breakout.
So. Ross, if the experts were to assess the chances of a new breakout requiring a new lockdown to be say 50% if the current lockdown was lifted on April 22, but were say 10% if the current lockdown were extended to five weeks, and 1% of the lockdown was extended to six weeks, what would you want to do?
I also think the likes of Ross, Thornley and Wittkowski are starry-eyed about what benefits there might be from coming out of lockdown early. There is now no "normal" we can return to. That timeline is gone, it's an alternate universe pinched off from the one we now inhabit.
The question now what difference does another week or two or three of extra lockdown make when it comes to building our new future. I'd guess that difference is really very small, and any benefit from coming out early would be very fragile and easily shattered by having to go back up the lockdown scale.
We certainly appear to be in a position where elimination within New Zealand is possible and within our grasp, and would be a very good thing compared with having to deal with recurring waves of this disease. It seems foolish to put this at risk for what would likely be a small financial gain for a few people.
That is going to be the danger. We can’t go out of lockdown until we’re sure that any outbreak can be identified and swamped immediately.
This means, apart from anything else, that the district level chief health officers can impose local constraints up to an including lockdowns without any idiotic interference from national or local political and business interference. Forget large gatherings for quite some time.
On thing that is quite apparent with this disease is that cluster management is essential. Contact tracing using cellphones it probably going to be the best tool available.
He could well be, Gabby. A bit greedy if so – with all us boomers about to 'move on' from this earthly coil, undertaking was already set to be a growth industry even without Covid19..
Except that funeral directing isn't exactly big business these days.
To stop the spread of COVID-19, gathering together for funerals and tangi is not permitted while New Zealand is at Alert Level 4.
Only people from the same self-isolation bubble as the deceased person can go to the funeral home and cemetery with the deceased, and only if these are in the same region. Talk with your funeral director about specific arrangements, including how to keep your physical distance.
This applies to all deceased persons, regardless of when and where they died, or the cause of death.
It includes gatherings at burials, cremations, memorial services, open or closed caskets or viewings, funeral wakes, processions or receptions and social gatherings, both indoors and outdoors.
Might pay to have another read because they both appear to be advocating isolating the vulnerable and let everyone else go BAU.
I am very concerned also about evidence indicating that asymptomatic people being carriers.
Which begs the question why there appears to be a huge reluctance on behalf of our leaders to encourage, no, make it mandatory that those providing routine daily care to the 'vulnerable' wear masks and gowns. Especially those providing routine supports to a number of clients.
The total rejection of this basic precautionary approach is baffling to say the least.
I'm going with two theories atm. A level of incompetence based on the system being generally bad at understanding and responding to the needs of disabled people. Or, it's the pragmatics of managing public health at the population level where individual needs are not easily counted, in this case they're taking into account the need to have PPE reserves in stock in case we end up with an epidemic in NZ.
Neither really explain it though, so there's a third factor for me, poor communication (within the system and with the public). It reminds me of WINZ in a way, the system is so dysfunctional that there are areas where it's really hard for things to work.
Did you see this? Looks like some MSM traction at last.
Uncle Ashley (and I mean that in the nicest possible way🙄) has told us repeatedly that there is no shortage of PPE. Over and over again.
I think he doth protest too much. Or.
He's trying to convince himself as well as us. (And if a thing is said often enough it will become fact.)
Or Someone has his ear who hasn't a fucking clue what a homecarer does in an average day and how many clients they will visit and how it has become routine to work when you're sick because if you don't turn up that person could lie stinking and starving all day because it's not like there's shit tons lining up to do the work. This Someone hasn't yet grasped the fact that asymptomatic people will be spreading the virus and it is also not always possible to smother an innocent sneeze or cough when you have your gloved hands full of soiled materials.
The Someone advising Uncle Ashley needs to get out and do the fucking work for a week…hands on….then return to their ivory tower from whence they make recommendations that will ultimately cause the deaths of frail elderly and disabled.
"Uncle Ashley (and I mean that in the nicest possible way🙄) has told us repeatedly that there is no shortage of PPE."
Right. But it took me a while to understand the management speak, which is that if you control the supply in the way they are currently, then there really is a big stockpile to rely on. If otoh, we allowed people to have access to the masks they need (institutional staff/clients, and home staff/clients), then the assessment of stock might look quite different.
And yep to the people who have AB's ear. That it's taken this week for the home care sector to even enter the public debate tells me a lot about where general knowledge is at.
What I expect to happen next is the supply will be loosened up to meet the needs of some in the disability sector, but not others, because the MoH doesn’t have a a great grasp of what the disability sector covers.
Clumsy, top-down system, where managers rely on what the people answerable to them, tell them… with increasing disconnect between the people on the frontline and managers at the top of the pyramid.
Are home are workers managed by private companies that DHB’s contract the work to?
All homebased care in NZ be it funded through MOH:DSS, ACC, DHBs and MSD has been contracted out to profit and non profits for decades. There is GOLD in them there 'ills and at one point there were almost as many contracted providers as there were clients needing the care.
ACC has not done too badly…not because they love the cripples more than the rest, but because they are legally obliged to provide the care and keep claimants from further harm. ACC claimants have entitlements. The rest do not.
Accordingly the system for non ACC disabled, frail elderly and those with chronic health conditions are caught up in the endless pissing contest between the various government funders and the Contracted Providers.
Life, for those who need a high level of care, is often a shit sandwich. And it's never far from lunchtime.
If Sacha were still around here on TS he'd be able to provide valuble knowledge and insight on the genesis of the current system.
Although 'system' is not quite an accurate term to use under the circumstances.
I don't have time to do a post this morning, but if anyone finds out more on this please let me know, I will try and get something up later in the day. Particularly concerning is this being the final straw and workers quitting the sector.
Bloomfield is now starting to appear before the epidemic committee – I'm watching on Parliament channel on freeview. It's livestreaming online somewhere.
Because of the Guarenteed Hours claim, employers have been obliged to pay homecare workers for an (agreed?) number of hours per week whether they work those hours or not. Accordingly employers have signed up some(many?) workers to the bateset minimum per week. Of course a number of workers actually do more hours per week than the GH and now for some reason those extra hours are not there. I imagine there is a deal of confusion of how many of the hours are Guaranteed. Chickens coming home to roost time.
Why the number if hours worked has gone down Ican only speculate.
But, I am guessing that for various reasons, most likely keeping Grandma safe from un PPE'd carers, family are stepping in to provide the care themselves…paid or unpaid.
Might also be the DHB telling elderly people they can't have their housework done during lock down. Don't know if that got reversed, there was something in the MSM about it a week or so ago.
No. Home care workers did not come up. Basically, Nat & ACT MPs are more focused on business issues and businesses being able to re-start operating ASAP.
Some Labour & GP Maori MPs on the committee raised some important issues about the amount of testing of Maori &Pacific people and whether there is adequate identification of C-19 among these communities – they are concerned there isn't.
This made it clear to me that there is no MP really representing the disabled and home care workers.
Bloomfield did make a general comment in his intro about the patchiness of front line workers getting access to PPEs. He said mostly it is working well, but there have been some gaps.
No further clarification of this, and no MP on the committee picked up on this – except maybe Seymour, but not specifically with reference to home care workers, and not with the vigilance he interrogated business issues.
There was an appearance from the Health top manager in Aussie – I think equivalent to Bloomfield. Questions were asked why Aussie went to equivalent of our level of Alert 3.5 with similar results to NZ's level 4.
Differences between the countries were highlighted eg in Skegg's appearance – basically, Aussie has a higher proportion of people in hospital in NZ. Also, the spread of cases is different, with more spread around the country in NZ.
Plus Aussie has been able to implement more and faster contact tracing than NZ. Also, while more businesses have been able to operate in Aussie, the general public are avoiding using them so there has been a big drop in business.
It was said that lot of testing, fast results, and quick contact tracing will be as good as having a vaccine as when we go down the alert levels.
And when the many vulnerable people, who tend to be the most disadvantaged and in the most precarious employment, run out of money and have to break isolation, and go to work?
Baffling indeed. There is no point in having PPE and not making it available to use.
If there is not enough PPE available for those who need it someone has not done their job. The population is only 5 million not 50 million.
Were I in a position to need a carer to use PPE and not use it, I would feel resentful because of having to fight for a carer to wear it.
I would rather take the approach of overdoing the PPE and not undergoing it.
I know that you have been doing a great job for many decades (being a carer and an advocate) and that you have not been recognised for your exceptional work.
I think you wrote that the accident was pre ACC cover.
"… appear to be arguing for letting the disease run rampant through the ranks of the vulnerable"
People arguing for thinning the herd very rarely (I've yet to see someone do this, but maybe??) define who they think the vulnerable are.
It seems to be some notion that is really old people who are already in death's waiting room. These people are going to die anyway, they suggest, or if they acknowledge that the vulnerable is a bigger proportion of the population, they suggest we can somehow separate them from the rest of society and 'protect' them, but don't provide a how, or where, that can be done.
A few numbers:
in 2018
4.3 percent of adults had been diagnosed with ischaemic heart disease (168,000 adults)
11.5 percent of adults took medication for asthma (452,000 adults)
5.8 percent of adults had been diagnosed with diabetes (227,000 adults)
in 2013
23 percent of the population (1.1 million people) were identified as disabled, and were limited in their daily activities by a range of impairments. This rate had increased from 20 percent since 2001 (only 59 percent of them are aged 65+ years)
That's not even counting people on treatment for serious, but recoverable diseases (e.g. most cancers) or people immune-suppressed for other reasons.
Many of these are the vulnerable.
Being ok with people with underlying conditions becoming ill with Covid-19 means we're ok with an overwhelmed health system, because even if they don't die from the disease, they'll take a whole lot longer to treat.
Moreover, there seems to be some long-term lung damage in survivors of serious Covid-19 – what's the cost of that in human and economic terms? do they know that this will be manageable? That were not creating another whole group of chronically ill people? They need to add a little detail to their opinions.
I'd like to think the overwhelming public support for the Level 4 lockdown is the general population know exactly who the vulnerable are and RedLogix suggests below (1.4), they value them in human terms.
The question I'm putting to you Ross is this. Are you over 50? Do you have close family over that age? Or someone otherwise younger but immune compromised for one of many reasons?
Are you prepared to have them, or yourself, die horribly in order to prove your idea right?
There's four questions there. And you seem to want to shoot the messenger. You should direct your questions to the experts, such as Dr Simon Thornley. I suspect he's not revelling in the fact that people have died from the virus.
But you must have missed the comment from the expert I referred to yesterday – he said that millions of people die each year from TB, malaria and prescribed drugs they didn’t need. He asked where the perspective was. That's a good question. Maybe you could have a go at answering it. 🙂
[I gave you a warning yesterday in a comment, but you didn’t take heed.
You dump controversial quotes with links here and then refuse to engage in good faith.
You’re refusing to answer questions, you appeal to authority, and you hide behind the people you quote, the so-called experts:
You should direct your questions to the experts, such as Dr Simon Thornley.
This is not good enough.
You are the commenter here, you lay out your arguments, and when these arguments are challenged, a (robust) debate ensues (or not, in your case). If you cannot or don’t want to engage in debate, you should stop commenting here, because it is starting to like denialist troll comments again, similar to your ill-considered and ill-perceived/received comments on CC.
I told you this yesterday:
Lift your game or leave.
I’m putting up a Post tomorrow and out of precaution, I will put you in Pre-Moderation. Depending on your next few comments, you will keep your commenting privileges here or you will end up in the Blacklist for the rest of the year – Incognito]
I assume you drive a car. Why do you do so when there’s a chance you might be killed? (That question isn’t rhetorical.) More than 300 people died on the roads last year so the risk is clearly greater than zero.
I drive a car because I consider the risk to be acceptable and because I consider the benefits outweigh the costs. I imagine the Icelandic Government took a similar approach when it decided against lockdown.
So the short answer is yes you are willing to take the 1 in 5 odds you will get seriously ill (it's a fucking nasty bug you really don't want to get) and about a 1 in 40 chance you will die.
And if I hypothetically assumed there are say 10 other people you are close to, family, old friends, close associates … then multiply those odds by 10. In other words several people you care for will get seriously ill and you'll be worried sick they will die. And about there is a good chance one of them will.
And that plays out for everyone in the country. This year. Mass grief and bad consciences do not a happy country make.
Most of us have looked at that bet and turned it down.
You've plucked figures out of the air to make some obscure point. (1 in 5 odds of getting seriously ill? That suggests that about a million NZers have gotten – or could soon get – seriously ill. In Iceland – which isn’t in lockdown – the reality is nothing like your figures.)
Let's get back to facts. There were 353 road deaths last year in NZ, and thousands of serious injuries. Now I presume you and your family are quite happy to travel by car even though the chances of death (or serious injury) are non-zero. Why do you make that choice? Presumably because you think the risk is acceptable.
People "accept" the "risk of travelling by car" because, in their own experience, they have been safe.
Part of the psychology about how people rank risk.
You can see it working with those who now say the “lockdown should be shortened or is unnecessary”, because they see their income drop, but not the deaths that would have happened without it.
I've no idea why we should use Iceland as the baseline comparison, the generally accepted figure some weeks back was that about 20% of people who become infected have a serious, debilitating illness considerably worse than seasonal flu.
From 00:00 on 24 March, a nation-wide ban on public assemblies over 20 took effect. All swimming pools, museums, libraries and bars closed, as did any businesses requiring a proximity of less than 2 m (hairdressers, tattoo artists, etc.)
But no "lockdown". Just nowhere interesting to go.
hHow about an employee or customer? Or one of their family members (so they'd have to take time off work or be late paying because they're ill or having to look after an ill family member)? Maybe that'll hit home for Ross…
the expert I referred to yesterday – he said that millions of people die each year from TB, malaria and prescribed drugs
Like most western countries we don't have Malaria in NZ because we don't have the mosquito that spreads it. Cases of TB here are about 300 per year yet we have had over 1300 of Covid in a couple of months even with the lockdown and other measures. TB can be treated with antibiotics and you need to "live or work closely with an infected person to catch the disease". That prescribed drugs thing is a nonsense because drugs also save lives.
Stop talking out your arse. It disgusts me that you see this, like Climate Change, as an opportunity to troll.
Remember two weeks ago when Thornley said we should follow Sweden’s excellent example? When he told Mike Hosking that the mortality rate wasn’t that big a deal and they were only old people anyway? When he quoted the Stanford University guy who claimed that the Diamond Princess mortality rate suggested that, if extrapolated to the US population 3.3 million people would get infected and only 10,000 would die?
Just Stuff click baiting ? These seem to align pretty well with USA repug talking points. But hey all we need are a few unresolved cases (like the korean #35?) who transferred to 1031 others for it to all take off again,
"Lockdown was appropriate when there was so little data…but the data is now clear, this is not the disaster we feared and prepared for. Elimination of this virus is likely not achievable and is not necessary."
The data is clear that lockdown is working,and obviously the subsequent data excites idiots.
Thornley et al make some reasonable points that should be considered along with others. It's important to debate various approaches, as everyone is learning as we go about the virus, it's effects and the effects of various degrees of restrictions and economic impact.
But some things Thornley says make me wonder if he is too distant from the real world. Like:
“If you catch Covid-19 your likelihood of dying is the same as your average likelihood of dying that year anyway. It has been described as squeezing your years mortality risk into two weeks.”
I think that many people and their families will have some concerns about reducing a life expectancy of 12 months down to 2 weeks for 'the greater good'.
Also:
The group’s plan would see the majority of schools and universities reopen, most businesses continue to operate, and allow domestic travel to resume.
Other parts of the plan would include people over 60 or with medical conditions continuing to self-isolate and receive state funded support and priority care.
If all under 60s have most restrictions lifted it's certain that the virus will pick up and spread more, and data shows it can spread quite quickly even when precautions are taken (health care workers are getting it).
So this not only increases the relatively low risk to under 60s by a bit, possibly quite a bit, but also either dramatically increases the risks of over 60s who want to go grocery shopping or go to get health care (doctors' surgeries and hospitals will get a lot more risky), or they will have to switch to even greater isolation than they now have to comply with.
I presume Thornley is under 60, and I suspect he hasn't talked this through with his grandparents or anyone over 60.
I suspect so too. Or he could think he is bullet proof.
Other parts of the plan would include people over 60 or with medical conditions continuing to self-isolate and receive state funded support and priority care.
Two problems here. We don't have a full list of who is more vulnerable than the general population. I've seen first hand accounts from people in their 30s who are otherwise healthy who have had heinous, non-hospitalised covid. We don't yet know if those people end up long or medium term disabled, nor if they are more vulnerable to a relapse or catching covid again. There are lots of people in NZ who are probably at risk but who are otherwise healthy eg people with asthma. Good luck telling them they have to self isolate indefinitely, let alone the rest of us.
The other problem is how does the state provide care to those people self isolating if there is no elimination of covid?
The details on these things are seriously lacking.
Despite the mounting concerns of experts both at home and abroad, Sweden continues what Anders Tegnell, the country’s chief epidemiologist, has called a “low-scale” approach. He insists this “is much more sustainable” in the long run.
But Sweden’s cases are rising. The country of some 10 million now has more than 10,000 cases and 887 deaths. Its total death toll is higher than that of all the other Nordic countries put together.
(Population of 10m – only about double NZ and yet 10x the cases and 177x the deaths!)
The government has said repeatedly that the main cornerstone of their strategy is to protect the elderly. Since the beginning of the crisis, they have been asked to stay home but despite these measures, the virus has spread to one-third of nursing homes in Stockholm, which has resulted in a spike in fatalities.
Prime minister Stefan Lofven recently admitted in an interview with daily Svenska Dagbladet that “Sweden has not succeeded in protecting it’s elderly”. Mr Lofven also warned citizens to prepare for possibly up to “thousands” of deaths.
It looks like there are some long term effects for those having survived a bad case of covid-19. And last time I looked, there seemed like there was some uncertainty about whether people could catch it again or not.
The were able to look at different American responses to the 1918 influenza epidemic. The states that went early and hard, recovered their health and economy sooner.
The scientists warn that the disease may infect the "nervous system and skeletal muscle as well as [the] respiratory tract" which could provide healthcare workers with an additional way to diagnose patients.
COVID-19 has "now reached pandemic status and is common all over the world" said the neurologists in their editorial.
"With so many affected patients, we can expect as neurologists to be confronted with these patients commonly in coming months and years."
I read a report about immune system issues today too. I think I'm going to stop reading until we get solid reporting rather than speculative, but really to lower my stress levels. I feel like society is really lagging behind in this aspect, in part because it is so new, but also because we are just so shit at disability.
And yep, the shut vulnerable people away, it's just a flu, what about the economy crowd need to take a long hard look in the mirror.
My stress level goes up when I think about what Covid-19 can do to an autoimmune condition.
If Covid-19 has a nervous system and a muscular skeletal component to it and without doubt a respiratory component. It is going to be much harder to establish weather or not it is the autoimmune condition or a Covid-19 condition which is presenting.
I try to deal with each health condition separately to avoid being or becoming overwhelmed. Some conditions are temporary and can be treated and others are chronic which are managed the best way they can be.
The medical science to do with Covid-19 is huge as it will probably prove to be systemic. Anything systemic requires multiple specialists, example: limited scleroderma.
As a consequence of Covid-19, I would not exclude people requiring home health care support or residential care like in an aged care facility.
Similar Treetop. I'm just treating any change or new set or resurgence of symptoms as something that need to be attended to immediately in case it is cv.
And likewise on the exclusion thing. I think some of the people arguing that are clueless about just how many people may be affected, both pre-existing conditions, and previously healthy people ending up with chronic illness pos-covid. Others just don't give a shit.
Now we've even got a wunch of bankers saying that economically the smarter thing to do is extend the lockdown to ensure the COVID problem is dealt to, rather than open up early and take the risk of having to lock down again.
Excellent step by step look at Thornley‘s arguments at Newsroom. Totally rebutted imho. Great balanced journalism that shreds Thornley.
A very important heads up though on what the attack lines will be on the PM. Easy to find lots of ammunition for those with the motivation (Nats, business etc) to look unfortunately. Thankfully they will be up against Ardern.
The 2 nursed who Johnson praised are both migrant nurses, the NHS saved his life, I would hope the tories stop with the bashing of this service, though they're certainly making a mess of supplying the PPE (like everywhere?). The fact so many Drs, nurses, porters and even London bus drivers are dying from this "flu" you would think would shut the deniers up. We're going into winter now, flu season.
I laughed listening to Boris say that he couldn't find the words to thank them.
I think he should give 350 million pounds a week to the NHS as thanks instead.
Possibly as far as infection reporting goes but holiday or not people are still dying and will be counted.
Anyway the US is in for a long slog. Even if containment measures are starting to work in places like California and New York the situation in other parts of the country is still developing. We haven’t seen the peak in great swathes of the country yet.
From graphs I have (but cannot post) – the USA looks to be flat-lining at their peak of daily new cases (around 100 new cases per million population) and still trending up for per capita deaths. Trends in deaths tend to lag trends in new cases by 7 days in big populations.
It is unlikely to. It is a big country. Like NZ regions, where the disease takes a foothold is uneven.
New York city has been the hardest hit, and the rate of confirmed cases and known deaths has a steadily reducing rate of increase – see % increases here.
Same in its earliest outbreak area in Washington State.
However there are other outbreak areas that are still increasing. For instance Louisiana, went from low to rapidly up but is now slowing once they started to take effective measures.
Not to mention Florida where the governor Ron DeSantis drank the draught of the Trumpian kool-aid more deeply than most and encoraged spring break – exporting covid-19 throughout the USA with moronic teenagers. A candidate for a mass murder charges and a death row sentence if I ever saw one.
I’d expect that over all, the US is going to stay high for some time just simply because most of its broken political system and especially the science shy moronic Republicans who prefer to believe bulklshit rather than reality. The southern states still haven’t hit peaks yet, and look to have some serious issues with killing their younger populations because of a long term underlying health crisis.
NYC has a population of 8.6m, but has aprox 60m tourist visitors a year. Instead of just one 'patient zero' in the city, they probably had many thousands all at once.
They had many thousands in one day – Americans returning from overseas cooped up in Airports for around 8 hours with no space to social distance waiting to be processed though border control and customs.
trump is like… we've done the most tests of any country.
Fact check… USA testing per capita is behind Spain, Italy, South Korea etc.
Sadly I feel the USA still has a long way to go.
They are currently setting up for Agent Orange's presser, he hasn't done one for a couple of days. Let's see how brave the press is today with their questions.
All good. I've been watching the Australian numbers – they are certainly moving in the right direction. Ours – I'm getting concerned about. On Saturday our deaths per 1M pop was 107th highest of 210 nations. Today, we're 86th. Australia were 79th, today they are 87th. So their numbers are improving, ours are worsening. Bad day today, sadly.
If you wanted to a clear example of how capitalists see you and your families lives:
Do you have any appreciation of how important the economy is? Where does your income come from? The official value of a life in NZ is $10k (ask Phamac). 10 dead from Covid =$100k. Cost so far= $5bn! Wake up, Jesus ignorance is a leg-iron
I'm sure that pharmac don't use $10,000 as the economic value of a life in their modelling. I'm guessing that the number they use is $10,000,000 and it has been misread or misunderstood somewhere along the way.
Thanks weka. Next time I see that happening I'll try to change it. Deleting the original comment and redoing it using the link tool to embed the link in some text should do it?
I hope that's true, because then we could reason that the half-life potential value inherent in a person could be ascertained, and that we could pay a single lump sum one-off tax payment to cover our entire lives. Then we could all go about our lives as we please. The figure would be quite low of course, and a complete fallacy. Which is what that number was anyway. But I like the beautiful simplicity in the way capitalists think: smart enough to know what numbers are, dumb enough to say them out loud, totally unaware of the consequences. A return to brutal tribalism would see many of the limp sadists running our country soon killed off by cheezel-munching thick-as-pig-shit thugs. An end to capitalism at last. Not an ideally pleasant way, but considering the endless brutal crimes carried out in their name, an end none the less.
Watching Al Jazerra last night and a report on covid 19 lockdown in France as the death toll hits 15,000…Fance's lockdown appears to be the equivalent of our level 3 and in shot during the report was a Paris street with hundreds of shoppers, no social distancing and little PPE….anyone think we will behave any differently?
Some Kiwis treat level 4 as level 3 (or lower) as it is. I even had family visitors bringing my kids Easter eggs on the weekend. They said that there was a newspaper piece with the PM saying that the Easter bunny and tooth fairy were essential services. Which; yes, is accurate, but a truly spectacular missing of the point!
Perhaps we need the government to invent another even more restrictive level 5 category to ensure that we observe minimum level 4 protocols? That would be horrible for people who realise that rules are not just for other people though.
Keep yourself home to level 5 or 10 if you think it is needed, and be done with it.
Do you realise that this lockdown for the families of the expendable essential workers have no safety in lockdown? Or does that just by completely – or can we finally dispense with the pretend of caring for workers?
My partner is one of the expendables. He leaves does his job and brings what ever he encounters back. The government provides no sanitizer to the families, no gloves, no masks. We provide that, when we can find it, from our socialist government survival allocation of funds.
So frankly, this is bullshit as the government is quite happy to pretend that nothing could be done to save the expendable workers and their whanau should the men and women keeping this country running atm come home with any transmittable disease.
So why not wrap yourself in a bail of cotton, add a few layers of bubble wrap and a full body condom to assure your safety.
Because some of us in lockdown were never safe we were just locked up like prisoners in our little private cages.
You obviously feel strongly about this, but maybe you could take a couple of minutes to proofread before you push publish? I may be getting your points wrong, but you can't expect people to read words that aren't there…
I know a nurse who has to not be within two metres of their spouse (vulnerable group). So they don't get to see each other except through windows for the duration. At that, they're lucky that their place is big enough to manage that trick. A shelf-stacker in a cheap flat or apartment has got to be having a harder time of it. Especially if families are cohabiting and there is no other option.
But SARS-COV-2 doesn't have a heart to care. It's going to do what it does, and we have to respond to that. It would have been better to have Pandemic preparation drills before the Crow swooped down upon us, but you can only change the present (with an eye to the future).
It's not all about me. Fewer people dying is better – even if that's John Key, Roger Douglas, or some other villain. Could the government be doing better in some areas – sure. But it's a juggling act.
BTW I have been in prison. Your cage comparison can only be made from ignorance. The difference is readily apparent to me.
Yes i agree people are losing it being at home for few weeks try a few years in a real cage with crazys all about, listening to people being cut up or sprayed with blood from the knife fight you cant remove your self from. As was said do this standing on my head,
I did see on AJ TV last night that France intercepted masks and gloves which were intended for Italy and Spain.
The EU has not worked when it comes to having PPE stocks for a pandemic. EU are also arguing about how a loan to the poorer EU countries will be paid back.
Yes…the EU is struggling big time…the crisis has shown the same divisions that the GFC did, perhaps more so…a decade on and the cause of the problems havnt been addressed…same the world over
Rightly or wrongly, I got the feeling on reading those comments from the group advocating a “return to normal” that they are wanting to be “in the picture” for some attention and headlines. None of them appear to be part of the regular advisers and experts we have become familiar with.
One of this group is an associate professor of law, another is a professor of experimental economics. The mind boggles.
An important aspect of Dr Bloomfield’s role is to present the facts in a calm and considered way. There has been no panic (apart from supermarket shoppers). People have largely been great at accepting what we have to do. No health system anywhere will be perfect. There will never be funding for 100% of everything. Having a close contact in the MOH, I know they are working very very long hours and have done for weeks.
Would love the daily press conferences to have some better questions.
On the top of my list would be:
Is Data ventures the commercial arm of the Stats department required to fulfill OIA's and if not why not – they have definitely been wallowing around in all our private data. And how much is the head of it paid. Not from what I have seen a crowd to trust.
The so called phone tracing Apps. In communities where phone usage is shared, non existent or non data enabled (like me I turn it off) and who are frequently poorer how is this supposed to work? or do they just get infected. Not everyone has a $600 phone.
Interesting. Governors along the west coast and in the northeast are getting together to coordinate responses and resources. That is what the federal government should be doing, but they've evidently concluded the Quid Pro Quoronavirus isn't going to ever do his job and he'll be forever just ineffectually fiddling around in his covfiefdom of the Oval Office.
"Today I am asking all Americans – I'm asking every Democrat, I'm asking every independent, I'm asking a lot of Republicans – to come together in this campaign to support your candidacy which I endorse,"
Could all the virtue signallers with their latex one-use gloves please dispose of them properly instead of flopping them on the ground in the supermarket carparks?
Ya reckon?
Because those 'heroes of the frontline', the underpaid and overworked, have to pick those dangerous and nasty items up. And dispose of them safely.
If you can't do the decent thing – stay home and starve. You'll never be missed.
Hmm…please don't disparage folk for taking precautions.
Quite right to take on the litterbugs however, whatever the litter.
But take some comfort in the fact, or near so, that the nasty greeblies will be on the outside of those gloves , the side that almost invariably ends up on the inside when the gloves are removed😉.
Yes. I missed that "virtue signalling" line myself in the wave of revulsion that rolled over me. "Vice demonstrating" would be a better term there.
I have seen the phrase used elsewhere as a kind of dogwhistle akin to "PC" or "snowflake". Is the definition; the act of insincerely performing a socially approved action? I can see how that almost fits the situation. Though wouldn't a true virtue signaller then ostentatiously place the gloves in a bin – or several more layers of plastic.
Hard to know others' motivations, unless they proclaim them out loud. And even then they have to both know the truth and represent it accurately. However, it's also hard for humans not to see and believe patterns in their surroundings.
Remember that Wisconsin election the Dem governor tried to delay and the Repugs at all levels up to the US Supreme Court forced to go ahead?
The real significance of that election wasn't the primary between Biden and Sanders, it's also the general election for a bunch of local government positions, including one seat on the Wisconsin Supreme Court.
It appears the incumbent conservative has lost, and that seat has flipped to the liberal challenger. From vote numbers for the Dem and Repug presidential primaries, it appears that Repugs just didn't turn out to vote. Kind of a predictable effect if there's disease going around and the question at the top of your voting paper is moot to begin with.
“Today, I am asking all Americans — I'm asking every Democrat; I’m asking every independent; I’m asking a lot of Republicans — to come together in this campaign to support your candidacy, which I endorse, to make certain that we defeat somebody who I believe is the most dangerous president in the modern history of this country,” Sanders told Biden.
“I will do all that I can to see that that happens, Joe,” Sanders pledged, after calling Trump a racist, a sexist, a xenophobe and a religious bigot who botched the nation’s initial response to the coronavirus pandemic.
“I want to thank you for that. It’s a big deal,” Biden said. “Your endorsement means a great deal, a great deal to me.”
Sanders and Biden pledged to form six task forces to advise the Biden campaign on policy to bridge divides with progressive voters and, especially, young people who voted for Sanders and against Biden in droves.
That is a most statesmanlike statement from Sanders there.
Expect four nights per week of anti government propaganda leading up to the election.
Wonder who will host the election debates on both major channels? 🙄
They are either tone deaf or so desperate they are being forced into high risk decisions.
Who there though Hannah Tamaki would be a good idea for Dancing with the Stars is anyone's guess, but I heard that the loss of key upper management in the last few months left some inexperience at in that space.
Fucksake: pandemic, radioactive forest fires, now that walking pustule is back on telly? As soon as his ratings drop he'll be back to his old edge-lording ways.
Well the things you find out in a shitfight. Burger King NZ is owned by Blackstone US. Was is probably the correct tense now because they ripped so much money out of it in NZ it couldn't survive a 2 week holiday.
In 2017, Cerberus Capital Management, a private equity firm, acquired Easton Hospital, a facility located in Pennsylvania’s Lehigh Valley, north of Philadelphia. Shortly after acquiring the hospital, Cerberus, through its Steward Health Care subsidiary, sold the property (but not the hospital itself) to a real estate investment firm, Medical Properties Trust.
Easton Hospital’s property was packaged with seven other hospitals, which netted Cerberus $304 million. But now Easton Hospital had to pay rent to operate on the land it had owned for the last 127 years.
Although the precise details are not public, it’s also likely that Cerberus saddled Easton Hospital with much of the debt it used to acquire the hospital. Typically, a private equity buyout “includes debt financing in the range of 50 percent to 70 percent of the purchase price, which the acquisition, in this case Easton Hospital, is expected to repay.
So, for the last few years, Easton Hospital was forced to divert a significant portion of its revenue to paying rent and the debt imposed on it by Cerberus. Not surprisingly, it’s financial condition worsened.
On March 22, as the pandemic shut down much of the nation and put a premium on hospital capacity, Cerberus sent a letter to Pennsylvania Governor Tom Wolf demanding the state assume “all operating expenses and liabilities of Easton Hospital” or the company would “proceed immediately on planning to close the facility.”
The gambit worked. On March 27, the state announced it would provide Easton Hospital with an infusion of $8 million to keep the hospital open until at least June 30, 2020. But Cerberus said it was promised more money, and threatened to close the facility at midnight. At the time, five people had already died of COVID-19 in that area of the state. To avoid shuttering the hospital, Pennsylvania relented, and agreed to pay Cerberus $8 million in exchange for a promise to keep the “facility open and operating for at least the next four weeks.” To keep the hospital operating through June, the state will have to pay Cerberus $24 million.
Japan's Hokkaido prefecture, which accounted for the country's highest number of coronavirus infections as the pandemic initially swept through Asia, has seen a sudden uptick in cases, causing government officials there to declare a state of emergency less than a month after lifting a similar order.
[..]
Hokkaido declared a three-week state of emergency in February that was lifted on March 19. The prefecture had begun to reopen schools and was even allowing carefully orchestrated public gatherings.
But the latest order reverses all that, asking residents once again to refrain from nonessential trips outside their homes and closing prefectural primary and secondary schools until May 6.
It surely is a damned if you do, damned if you don't scenario, though for purely selfish reasons, I wouldn't say no to a couple of extra weeks in lock down, but then I am immune compromised, so I won't be back at work until level 1 is declared anyway.
Anti-Corbyn Labour officials worked to lose general election to oust leader, leaked dossier finds
Call for investigation into ‘possible misuse of funds’ by senior officials on party’s right wing
Labour party officials opposed to Jeremy Corbyn worked to lose the 2017 general election in the hope that a bad result would trigger a leadership contest to oust him, a dossier drawn up by the party suggests.
A huge cache of leaked WhatsApp messages and emails show senior officials from the party’s right wing, who worked at its HQ, became despondent as Labour climbed in the polls during the election campaign despite their efforts.
I was intrigued by a statement that came from China some time ago along the lines that the government there had told banks not to expect to make a profit this year. Seems quite reasonable in some respects, and something that to an extent could be expected here given the governments underlying support for the baking system. With those thoughts I think any bank that achieves much the same profit this year as it did last year should be regarded as a leech on New Zealanders, and we should take not of their greed in considering who we should do business with.
With that in view, I expect most banks will change the classification on most loans to require much heavier reserves against default, to provision for all sorts of future "committed" spending, and do their utmost to get profit down, so a big profit will be evidence of incompetence at the skill of ripping us off while appearing to be there to help us.
How will Kiwibank fare? At least their profits stay in New Zealand, but is that good enough?
"The last six weeks have seen a bout of intervention without precedent. The results have been momentous. A giant public safety net has been stretched out across the financial system. We may never know what went on behind the closed doors of the US Federal Reserve, the European Central Bank and the Bank of England during those critical moments in March. So far, only muffled sounds of argument have reached the outside. But as the virus struck, the men and women in those three central banks held the economic survival of hundreds of millions of people and the fate of nations in their hands. This is the story of how global financial meltdown was averted by central banks taking decisions that, just a month earlier, they would have dismissed as utterly impossible."
Photo: Lynn Grieveson / The KākāTL;DR: My top six things to note around housing, climate and poverty in Aotearoa’s political economy in the week to July 27 were:1. The Minister for Ford Rangers strikes againTransport Minister Simeon Brown was again the busiest of the Cabinet ministers this week, announcing an ...
You got a fast carAnd I want a ticket to anywhereMaybe we make a dealMaybe together we can get somewhereAny place is betterYesterday’s newsletter, Trust In Me, on the report of abuse in state care, and by religious organisations, between 1950 and 2019, coupled with the hypocrisy of Christopher Luxon ...
New Zealand is again having to reconcile conflicting pressures from its military and its trade interests. Should we join Pillar Two of AUKUS and risk compromising our markets in China? For a century after New Zealand was founded in 1840, its external security arrangements and external economics arrangements were aligned. ...
The ‘50 Shades of Green’ farmers’ protest in 2019 was heavy on climate change denial, but five years on, scepticism and criticism about the idea that pine forests can save us is growing across the board. File photo: Lynn GrievesonTL;DR: Here’s the top six news items of note in climate ...
This morning the sky was bright.The birds, in their usual joyous bliss. Nature doesn’t seem to feel the heat of what might angst humans.Their calls are clear and beautiful.Just some random thoughts:MāoriPaul Goldsmith has announced his government will roll back the judiciary’s rulings on Māori Customary Marine Title, which recognises ...
In 2003, the Court of Appeal delivered its decision in Ngati Apa v Attorney-General, ruling that Māori customary title over the foreshore and seabed had not been universally extinguished, and that the Māori Land Court could determine claims and confirm title if the facts supported it. This kicked off the ...
Earlier this week at Parliament, Labour leader Chris Hipkins was applauded for saying that the response to the final report of the Royal Commission of Inquiry into Abuse in Care had to be “bigger than politics.” True, but the fine words, apologies and “we hear you” messages will soon ring ...
TL;DR: In news breaking this morning:The Ministry of Education is cutting $2 billion from its school building programme so the National-ACT-NZ First Coalition Government has enough money to deliver tax cuts; The Government has quietly lowered its child poverty reduction targets to make them easier to achieve;Te Whatu Ora-Health NZ’s ...
Kia ora. These are some stories that caught our eye this week – as always, feel free to share yours in the comments. Our header image this week (via Eke Panuku) shows the planned upgrade for the Karanga Plaza Tidal Swimming Steps. The week in Greater Auckland On ...
1. What's not to love about the way the Harris campaign is turning things around?a. Nothingb. Love all of itc. God what a reliefd. Not that it will be by any means easye. All of the above 2. Documents released by the Ministry of Health show Associate Health Minister Casey ...
Trust in me in all you doHave the faith I have in youLove will see us through, if only you trust in meWhy don't you, you trust me?In a week that saw the release of the 3,000 page Abuse in Care report Christopher Luxon was being asked about Boot Camps. ...
TL;DR: The podcast above of the weekly ‘hoon’ webinar for paying subscribers last night features co-hosts and talking about the Royal Commission Inquiry into Abuse in Carereport released this week, and with:The Kākā’s climate correspondent on a UN push to not recognise carbon offset markets and ...
TL;DR: As of 6:00 am on Friday, July 26, the top six announcements, speeches, reports and research around housing, climate and poverty in Aotearoa’s political economy in the last day are:Transport: Simeon Brown announced$802.9 million in funding for 18 new trains on the Wairarapa and Manawatū rail lines, which ...
The northern expressway extension from Warkworth to Whangarei is likely to require radical changes to legislation if it is going to be built within the foreseeable future. The Government’s powers to purchase land, the planning process and current restrictions on road tolling are all going to need to be changed ...
Text within this block will maintain its original spacing when publishedFirst they came for the doctors But I was confused by the numbers and costs So I didn't speak up Then they came for our police and nurses And I didn't think we could afford those costs anyway So I ...
Photo by Joshua J. Cotten on UnsplashWe’re back again after our mid-winter break. We’re still with the ‘new’ day of the week (Thursday rather than Friday) when we have our ‘hoon’ webinar with paying subscribers to The Kākā for an hour at 5 pm.Jump on this link on YouTube Livestream ...
Notes: This is a free article. Abuse in Care themes are mentioned. Video is at the bottom.BackgroundYesterday’s report into Abuse in Care revealed that at least 1 in 3 of all who went through state and faith based care were abused - often horrifically. At least, because not all survivors ...
Luxon speaks in Parliament yesterday about the Abuse in Care report. Photo: Hagen Hopkins/Getty ImagesTL;DR: The top six things I’ve noted around housing, climate and poverty in Aotearoa’s political economy today are:PM Christopher Luxon said yesterday in tabling the Abuse in Carereport in Parliament he wanted to ‘do the ...
About a decade ago I worked with a bloke called Steve. He was the grizzled veteran coder, a few years older than me, who knew where the bodies were buried - code wise. Despite his best efforts to be approachable and friendly he could be kind of gruff, through to ...
Some of the recent announcements from the government have reminded us of posts we’ve written in the past. Here’s one from early 2020. There were plenty of reactions to the government’s infrastructure announcement a few weeks ago which saw them fund a bunch of big roading projects. One of ...
TL;DR: My pick of the top six links elsewhere around housing, climate and poverty in Aotearoa’s political economy in the last day or so to 7:00 am on Thursday, July 25 are:News: Why Electric Kiwi is closing to new customers - and why it matters RNZ’s Susan EdmundsScoop: Government drops ...
Hi,I felt a small wet tongue snaking through one of the holes in my Crocs. It explored my big toe, darting down one side, then the other. “He’s looking for some toe cheese,” said the woman next to me, words that still haunt me to this day.Growing up in New ...
Yesterday I happily quoted the Prime Minister without fact-checking him and sure enough, it turns out his numbers were all to hell. It’s not four kg of Royal Commission report, it’s fourteen.My friend and one-time colleague-in-comms Hazel Phillips gently alerted me to my error almost as soon as I’d hit ...
TL;DR: As of 6:00 am on Thursday, July 25, the top six announcements, speeches, reports and research around housing, climate and poverty in Aotearoa’s political economy in the last day were:The Abuse in Care Royal Commission of Inquirypublished its final report yesterday.PM Christopher Luxon and The Minister responsible for ...
The Official Information Act has always been a battle between requesters seeking information, and governments seeking to control it. Information is power, so Ministers and government agencies want to manage what is released and when, for their own convenience, and legality and democracy be damned. Their most recent tactic for ...
TL;DR: The top six things I’ve noted around housing, climate and poverty in Aotearoa’s political economy today are:Transport and Energy Minister Simeon Brown is accelerating plans to spend at least $10 billion through Public Private Partnerships (PPPs) to extend State Highway One as a four-lane ‘Expressway’ from Warkworth to Whangarei ...
I live my life (woo-ooh-ooh)With no control in my destinyYea-yeah, yea-yeah (woo-ooh-ooh)I can bleed when I want to bleedSo come on, come on (woo-ooh-ooh)You can bleed when you want to bleedYea-yeah, come on (woo-ooh-ooh)Everybody bleed when they want to bleedCome on and bleedGovernments face tough challenges. Selling unpopular decisions to ...
Please note:To skip directly to the- parliamentary footage in the video, scroll to 1:21 To skip to audio please click on the headphone iconon the left hand side of the screenThis video / audio section is under development. ...
Given the crackdown on wasteful government spending, it behooves me to point to a high profile example of spending by the Luxon government that looks like a big, fat waste of time and money. I’m talking about the deployment of NZDF personnel to support the US-led coalition in the Red ...
TL;DR: My pick of the top six links elsewhere around housing, climate and poverty in Aotearoa’s political economy in the last day or so to 7:40 am on Wednesday, July 24 are:Deep Dive: Chipping away at the housing crisis, including my comments RNZ/Newsroom’s The DetailNews: Government softens on asset sales, ...
As I reported about the city centre, Auckland’s rail network is also going through a difficult and disruptive period which is rapidly approaching a culmination, this will result in a significant upgrade to the whole network. Hallelujah. Also like the city centre this is an upgrade predicated on the City ...
Today, a 4 kilogram report will be delivered to Parliament. We know this is what the report of the Royal Commission of Inquiry into Abuse in State and Faith-based Care weighs, because our Prime Minister told us so.Some reporter had blindsided him by asking a question about something done by ...
TL;DR: As of 7:00 am on Wednesday, July 24, the top six announcements, speeches, reports and research around housing, climate and poverty in Aotearoa’s political economy in the last day are:Beehive:Transport Minister Simeon Brownannounced plans to use PPPs to fund, build and run a four-lane expressway between Auckland ...
NewstalkZB host Mike Hosking, who can usually be relied on to give Prime Minister Christopher Luxon an easy run, did not do so yesterday when he interviewed him about the HealthNZ deficit. Luxon is trying to use a deficit reported last year by HealthNZ as yet another example of the ...
Back in January a StatsNZ employee gave a speech at Rātana on behalf of tangata whenua in which he insulted and criticised the government. The speech clearly violated the principle of a neutral public service, and StatsNZ started an investigation. Part of that was getting an external consultant to examine ...
Renting for life: Shared ownership initiatives are unlikely to slow the slide in home ownership by much. Photo: Lynn Grieveson / The KākāTL;DR: The top six things I’ve noted around housing, climate and poverty in Aotearoa’s political economy today are:A Deloittereport for Westpac has projected Aotearoa’s home-ownership rate will ...
You're broken down and tiredOf living life on a merry go roundAnd you can't find the fighterBut I see it in you so we gonna walk it outAnd move mountainsWe gonna walk it outAnd move mountainsAnd I'll rise upI'll rise like the dayI'll rise upI'll rise unafraidI'll rise upAnd I'll ...
There’s been a change in Myers Park. Down the steps from St. Kevin’s Arcade, past the grassy slopes, the children’s playground, the benches and that goat statue, there has been a transformation. The underpass for Mayoral Drive has gone from a barren, grey, concrete tunnel, to a place that thrums ...
This is a re-post from Yale Climate Connections Global society may have finally slammed on the brakes for climate-warming pollution released by human fossil fuel combustion. According to the Carbon Monitor Project, the total global climate pollution released between February and May 2024 declined slightly from the amount released during the same ...
TL;DR: My pick of the top six links elsewhere around housing, climate and poverty in Aotearoa’s political economy in the last day or so to 7:00 am on Tuesday, July 23 are:Deep Dive: Penlink: where tolling rhetoric meets reality BusinessDesk-$$$’sOliver LewisScoop:Te Pūkenga plans for regional polytechs leak out ...
TL;DR: As of 6:00 am on Tuesday, July 23, the top six announcements, speeches, reports and research around housing, climate and poverty in Aotearoa’s political economy in the last day are:Health: Shane Reti announcedthe Board of Te Whatu Ora-Health New Zealand was being replaced with Commissioner Lester Levy ...
Health NZ warned the Government at the end of March that it was running over Budget. But the reasons it gave were very different to those offered by the Prime Minister yesterday. Prime Minister Christopher Luxon blamed the “botched merger” of the 20 District Health Boards (DHBs) to create Health ...
Long ReadKey Summary: Although National increased the health budget by $1.4 billion in May, they used an old funding model to project health system costs, and never bothered to update their pre-election numbers. They were told during the Health Select Committees earlier in the year their budget amount was deficient, ...
As a momentous, historic weekend in US politics unfolded, analysts and commentators grasped for precedents and comparisons to help explain the significance and power of the choice Joe Biden had made. The 46th president had swept the Democratic party’s primaries but just over 100 days from the election had chosen ...
TL;DR: I’m casting around for new ideas and ways of thinking about Aotearoa’s political economy to find a few solutions to our cascading and self-reinforcing housing, poverty and climate crises.Associate Professor runs an online masters degree in the economics of sustainability at Torrens University in Australia and is organising ...
The Finance and Expenditure Committee has reported back on National's Local Government (Water Services Preliminary Arrangements) Bill. The bill sets up water for privatisation, and was introduced under urgency, then rammed through select committee with no time even for local councils to make a proper submission. Naturally, national's select committee ...
Some years ago, I bought a book at Dunedin’s Regent Booksale for $1.50. As one does. Vandrad the Viking (1898), by J. Storer Clouston, is an obscure book these days – I cannot find a proper online review – but soon it was sitting on my shelf, gathering dust alongside ...
History is not on the side of the centre-left, when Democratic presidents fall behind in the polls and choose not to run for re-election. On both previous occasions in the past 75 years (Harry Truman in 1952, Lyndon Johnson in 1968) the Democrats proceeded to then lose the White House ...
This is a free articleCoverageThis morning, US President Joe Biden announced his withdrawal from the Presidential race. And that is genuinely newsworthy. Thanks for your service, President Biden, and all the best to you and yours.However, the media in New Zealand, particularly the 1News nightly bulletin, has been breathlessly covering ...
A homeless person’s camp beside a blocked-off slipped damage walkway in Freeman’s Bay: we are chasing our tail on our worsening and inter-related housing, poverty and climate crises. Photo: Photo: Lynn Grieveson / The KākāTL;DR: The top six things I’ve noted around housing, climate and poverty in Aotearoa’s political economy ...
What has happened to it all?Crazy, some'd sayWhere is the life that I recognise?(Gone away)But I won't cry for yesterdayThere's an ordinary worldSomehow I have to findAnd as I try to make my wayTo the ordinary worldYesterday morning began as many others - what to write about today? I began ...
TL;DR: My pick of the top six links elsewhere around housing, climate and poverty in Aotearoa’s political economy in the last day or so to 7:00 am on Monday, July 22 are:Today’s Must Read: Father and son live in a tent, and have done for four years, in a million ...
TL;DR: As of 7:00 am on Monday, July 22, the top six announcements, speeches, reports and research around housing, climate and poverty in Aotearoa’s political economy in the last day are:US President Joe Biden announced via X this morning he would not stand for a second term.Multinational professional services firm ...
A listing of 32 news and opinion articles we found interesting and shared on social media during the past week: Sun, July 14, 2024 thru Sat, July 20, 2024. Story of the week As reflected by preponderance of coverage, our Story of the Week is Project 2025. Until now traveling ...
This weekend, a friend pointed out someone who said they’d like to read my posts, but didn’t want to pay. And my first reaction was sympathy.I’ve already told folks that if they can’t comfortably subscribe, and would like to read, I’d be happy to offer free subscriptions. I don’t want ...
National: The Party of ‘Law and Order’ IntroductionThis weekend, the Government formally kicked off one of their flagship policy programs: a military style boot camp that New Zealand has experimented with over the past 50 years. Cartoon credit: Guy BodyIt’s very popular with the National Party’s Law and Orderimage, ...
Day one of the solo leg of my long journey home begins with my favourite sound: footfalls in an empty street. 5.00 am and it’s already light and already too warm, almost.If I can make the train that leaves Budapest later this hour I could be in Belgrade by nightfall; ...
Do you remember Y2K, the threat that hung over humanity in the closing days of the twentieth century? Horror scenarios of planes falling from the sky, electronic payments failing and ATMs refusing to dispense cash. As for your VCR following instructions and recording your favourite show - forget about it.All ...
Climate Change Minister Simon Watts being questioned by The Kākā’s Bernard Hickey.TL;DR: My top six things to note around housing, climate and poverty in Aotearoa’s political economy in the week to July 20 were:1. A strategy that fails Zero Carbon Act & Paris targetsThe National-ACT-NZ First Coalition Government finally unveiled ...
Summary:As New Zealand loses at least 12 leaders in the public service space of health, climate, and pharmaceuticals, this month alone, directly in response to the Government’s policies and budget choices, what lies ahead may be darker than it appears. Tui examines some of those departures and draws a long ...
The Minister of Housing’s ambition is to reduce markedly the ratio of house prices to household incomes. If his strategy works it would transform the housing market, dramatically changing the prospects of housing as an investment.Leaving aside the Minister’s metaphor of ‘flooding the market’ I do not see how the ...
As previously noted, my historical fantasy piece, set in the fifth-century Mediterranean, was accepted for a Pirate Horror anthology, only for the anthology to later fall through. But in a good bit of news, it turned out that the story could indeed be re-marketed as sword and sorcery. As of ...
An employee of tobacco company Philip Morris International demonstrates a heated tobacco device. Photo: Getty ImagesTL;DR: The top six things I’ve noted around housing, climate and poverty in Aotearoa’s political economy on Friday, July 19 are:At a time when the Coalition Government is cutting spending on health, infrastructure, education, housing ...
TL;DR: My pick of the top six links elsewhere around housing, climate and poverty in Aotearoa’s political economy in the last day or so to 8:30 am on Friday, July 19 are:Scoop: NZ First Minister Casey Costello orders 50% cut to excise tax on heated tobacco products. The minister has ...
Kia ora, it’s time for another Friday roundup, in which we pull together some of the links and stories that caught our eye this week. Feel free to add more in the comments! Our header image this week shows a foggy day in Auckland town, captured by Patrick Reynolds. ...
TL;DR : Here’s the top six items climate news for Aotearoa this week, as selected by Bernard Hickey and The Kākā’s climate correspondent Cathrine Dyer. A discussion recorded yesterday is in the video above and the audio of that sent onto the podcast feed.The Government released its draft Emissions Reduction ...
Save some money, get rich and old, bring it back to Tobacco Road.Bring that dynamite and a crane, blow it up, start all over again.Roll up. Roll up. Or tailor made, if you prefer...Whether you’re selling ciggies, digging for gold, catching dolphins in your nets, or encouraging folks to flutter ...
Waiting In The Wings:For truly, if Trump is America’s un-assassinated Caesar, then J.D. Vance is America’s Octavian, the Republic’s youthful undertaker – and its first Emperor.DONALD TRUMP’S SELECTION of James D. Vance as his running-mate bodes ill for the American republic. A fervent supporter of Viktor Orban, the “illiberal” prime ...
TL;DR: As of 6:00 am on Friday, July 19, the top six announcements, speeches, reports and research around housing, climate and poverty in Aotearoa’s political economy in the last day are:The PSAannounced the Employment Relations Authority (ERA) had ruled in the PSA’s favour in its case against the Ministry ...
Te Rangi e tu nei (The sky above us) Te Papa e takoto nei (The land beneath us) Tatou katoa te hunga ora (To us all the living) Tena koutou katoa (Greetings) ...
A late change to charter school legislation will cheat educators out of fair pay and negotiating power proving charter schools are just a vehicle to make profit out of our education system. ...
In 2004 te iwi Māori rallied against the Crown’s attempt to confiscate our coastlines and moana with the Foreshore and Seabed Act. This led to the largest hīkoi of a generation and the birth of Te Pāti Māori. 20 years later, history is repeating itself. Today the government has announced ...
It has been five and a half years since the Royal Commission of Inquiry into Abuse in Care was established to investigate the abuse of children, young people, and vulnerable adults within state and faith-based institutions. Yesterday, the final report - Whanaketia through pain and trauma, from darkness to light ...
The Green Party is calling on the Government to take action off the back of the International Court of Justice ruling on Israel’s illegal occupation of Palestine. ...
On Friday the International Court of Justice reaffirmed what Palestinian’s have been telling us for decades: that the occupation and colonisation of Palestinian lands by Israel is illegal and must end immediately. They also called for reparations for Palestinian’s who have lived under Israeli occupation since it began in 1967. ...
Labour calls on the Government to act after the International Court of Justice (ICJ) ruled that Israel’s occupation of Palestinian Territories is illegal. ...
The 53.7 percent rise in benefit sanctions over the last year is more proof of this Government’s disdain for our communities most in need of support. ...
Aotearoa could be a country where every child grows up feeling safe, loved and with a sense of belonging in their whānau and community. But for some of our children, this is far from reality. Instead, they are trapped in a maze of intergenerational harm that they can’t escape on ...
Te Pāti Māori are calling for David Seymour to resign as Associate Health Minister in response to his call for Pharmac to ignore the Treaty of Waitangi. “This announcement is just another example of the government’s anti-Tiriti, anti-Māori agenda.” Said Co-leader and spokesperson for health, Debbie Ngarewa-Packer. “Seymour thinks it ...
The soaring price of renting is driving the rise of inflation in this country - with latest figures from Stats NZ showing rents are up 4.8 per cent on average while annual inflation is at 3.3 per cent. ...
National’s Emissions Reduction Plan will take New Zealand further from the economy we need to ensure the next generation has a stable climate and secure livelihoods. ...
Following consultation with named parties and thorough consideration of privacy interests, the Green Party is in a position to release the Executive Summary of the final report from the independent investigation into Darleen Tana. ...
Prime Minister Christopher Luxon should be asking serious questions of his Minister for Resources Shane Jones now it’s been revealed he misled the public about a dinner with mining companies that he didn’t declare and said wasn’t pre-arranged. ...
Te Pāti Māori have submitted to the Justice Select Committee against the Sentencing (Reinstating Three Strikes) Amendment Bill. The bill will further entrench racism in our justice system and fails to focus on rehabilitation. “Reinstating Three Strikes will empower a systematically racist system and exacerbate the overrepresentation of Māori in ...
The Transport and Infrastructure Committee is set to make a determination on the Residential Tenancies Amendment (RTA) Bill in the coming weeks. “This legislation will give landlords the power to kick our whānau out onto the street for no reason” said Housing spokesperson, Mariameno Kapa-Kingi. “Their solution to the housing ...
“National’s campaign was about tackling crime and the best they can do is a two-year long Ministerial Advisory Group,” Labour justice spokesperson Duncan Webb said. ...
“There are more examples of charter schools failing their students than there are success stories. The coalition Government is driving to dismantle our public school system and instead promote a privatised, competitive structure that puts profits before kids,” Jan Tinetti said. ...
“This government is choosing to deliberately mislead and withhold information, keeping our people in the dark about this government’s agenda and the future of our mokopuna,” said co-leader and spokesperson for Health, Debbie Ngarewa-Packer. The call comes after the demand from the Chief Ombudsman that Associate Minister of Health, Casey ...
“Today’s climate announcement by Simon Watts makes clear the National Government is simply paying lip service to meeting its climate change targets,” Megan Woods said. ...
National is choosing to make life harder for workers by taking away the rights our communities have fought hard for. Here's how they’re taking workers backwards. ...
Australia, Canada and New Zealand today issued the following statement on the need for an urgent ceasefire in Gaza and the risk of expanded conflict between Hizballah and Israel. The situation in Gaza is catastrophic. The human suffering is unacceptable. It cannot continue. We remain unequivocal in our condemnation of ...
Attorney-General Judith Collins today reminded all State and faith-based institutions of their legal obligation to preserve records relevant to the safety and wellbeing of those in its care. “The Abuse in Care Inquiry’s report has found cases where records of the most vulnerable people in State and faith‑based institutions were ...
Minister of Internal Affairs Brooke van Velden says the Government’s online safety website for children and young people has reached one million page views. “It is great to see so many young people and their families accessing the site Keep It Real Online to learn how to stay safe online, and manage ...
Tēnā tātou katoa, Ngā mihi te rangi, ngā mihi te whenua, ngā mihi ki a koutou, kia ora mai koutou. Thank you for the opportunity to be here and the invitation to speak at this 50th anniversary conference. I acknowledge all those who have gone before us and paved the ...
New Zealand’s payroll providers have successfully prepared to ensure 3.5 million individuals will, from Wednesday next week, be able to keep more of what they earn each pay, says Finance Minister Nicola Willis and Revenue Minister Simon Watts. “The Government's tax policy changes are legally effective from Wednesday. Delivering this tax ...
An experimental vineyard which will help futureproof the wine sector has been opened in Blenheim by Associate Regional Development Minister Mark Patterson. The covered vineyard, based at the New Zealand Wine Centre – Te Pokapū Wāina o Aotearoa, enables controlled environmental conditions. “The research that will be produced at the Experimental ...
The Coalition Government has confirmed the indicative regional breakdown of North Island Weather Event (NIWE) funding for state highway recovery projects funded through Budget 2024, Transport Minister Simeon Brown says. “Regions in the North Island suffered extensive and devastating damage from Cyclone Gabrielle and the 2023 Auckland Anniversary Floods, and ...
Indonesia’s Foreign Minister, Retno Marsudi, will visit New Zealand next week, Foreign Minister Winston Peters has announced. “Indonesia is important to New Zealand’s security and economic interests and is our closest South East Asian neighbour,” says Mr Peters, who is currently in Laos to engage with South East Asian partners. ...
He aha te kai a te rangatira? He kōrero, he kōrero, he kōrero. The government has reaffirmed its commitment to supporting the aspirations of Ngāti Maniapoto, Minister for Māori Development Tama Potaka says. “My thanks to Te Nehenehenui Trust – Ngāti Maniapoto for bringing their important kōrero to a ministerial ...
Transport Minister Simeon Brown has thanked outgoing Chair of the Civil Aviation Authority, Janice Fredric, for her service to the board.“I have received Ms Fredric’s resignation from the role of Chair of the Civil Aviation Authority,” Mr Brown says.“On behalf of the Government, I want to thank Ms Fredric for ...
The Government is proposing legislation to overturn a Court of Appeal decision and amend the Marine and Coastal Area Act in order to restore Parliament’s test for Customary Marine Title, Treaty Negotiations Minister Paul Goldsmith says. “Section 58 required an applicant group to prove they have exclusively used and occupied ...
Regulation Minister David Seymour says that opposition parties have united in bad faith, opposing what they claim are ‘dangerous changes’ to the Early Childhood Education sector, despite no changes even being proposed yet. “Issues with affordability and availability of early childhood education, and the complexity of its regulation, has led ...
After receiving more than 740 submissions in the first 20 days, Regulation Minister David Seymour is asking the Ministry for Regulation to extend engagement on the early childhood education regulation review by an extra two weeks. “The level of interest has been very high, and from the conversations I’ve been ...
The Coalition Government is investing $802.9 million into the Wairarapa and Manawatū rail lines as part of a funding agreement with the NZ Transport Agency (NZTA), KiwiRail, and the Greater Wellington and Horizons Regional Councils to deliver more reliable services for commuters in the lower North Island, Transport Minister Simeon ...
Local Government Minister Simeon Brown has announced his intention to appoint a Crown Manager to both Hawke’s Bay Regional and Wairoa District Councils to speed up the delivery of flood protection work in Wairoa."Recent severe weather events in Wairoa this year, combined with damage from Cyclone Gabrielle in 2023 have ...
Mr Speaker, this is a day that many New Zealanders who were abused in State care never thought would come. It’s the day that this Parliament accepts, with deep sorrow and regret, the Report of the Royal Commission of Inquiry into Abuse in Care. At the heart of this report are the ...
For the first time, the Government is formally acknowledging some children and young people at Lake Alice Psychiatric Hospital experienced torture. The final report of the Royal Commission of Inquiry into Abuse in State and Faith-based Care “Whanaketia – through pain and trauma, from darkness to light,” was tabled in Parliament ...
The Government has acknowledged the nearly 2,400 courageous survivors who shared their experiences during the Royal Commission of Inquiry into Historical Abuse in State and Faith-Based Care. The final report from the largest and most complex public inquiry ever held in New Zealand, the Royal Commission Inquiry “Whanaketia – through ...
With a week to go before hard-working New Zealanders see personal income tax relief for the first time in fourteen years, 513,000 people have used the Budget tax calculator to see how much they will benefit, says Finance Minister Nicola Willis. “Tax relief is long overdue. From next Wednesday, personal income ...
Workplace Relations and Safety Minister Brooke van Velden says a bill that has passed its first reading will improve parental leave settings and give non-biological parents more flexibility as primary carer for their child. The Regulatory Systems Amendment Bill (No3), passed its first reading this morning. “It includes a change ...
Two Bills designed to improve regulation and make it easier to do business have passed their first reading in Parliament, says Economic Development Minister Melissa Lee. The Regulatory Systems (Economic Development) Amendment Bill and Regulatory Systems (Immigration and Workforce) Amendment Bill make key changes to legislation administered by the Ministry ...
New legislation paves the way for greater competition in sectors such as banking and electricity, Commerce and Consumer Affairs Minister Andrew Bayly says. “Competitive markets boost productivity, create employment opportunities and lift living standards. To support competition, we need good quality regulation but, unfortunately, a recent OECD report ranked New ...
Minister of Internal Affairs Brooke van Velden says lotteries for charitable purposes, such as those run by the Heart Foundation, Coastguard NZ, and local hospices, will soon be allowed to operate online permanently. “Under current laws, these fundraising lotteries are only allowed to operate online until October 2024, after which ...
The Coalition Government is accelerating work on the new four-lane expressway between Auckland and Whangārei as part of its Roads of National Significance programme, with an accelerated delivery model to deliver this project faster and more efficiently, Transport Minister Simeon Brown says. “For too long, the lack of resilient transport connections ...
Sir Don McKinnon will travel to Viet Nam this week as a Special Envoy of the Government, Foreign Minister Winston Peters has announced. “It is important that the Government give due recognition to the significant contributions that General Secretary Nguyen Phu Trong made to New Zealand-Viet Nam relations,” Mr ...
Minister of Internal Affairs Brooke van Velden says newly appointed Commissioner, Grant Illingworth KC, will help deliver the report for the first phase of the Royal Commission of Inquiry into COVID-19 Lessons, due on 28 November 2024. “I am pleased to announce that Mr Illingworth will commence his appointment as ...
Foreign Minister Winston Peters travels to Laos this week to participate in a series of Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN)-led Ministerial meetings in Vientiane. “ASEAN plays an important role in supporting a peaceful, stable and prosperous Indo-Pacific,” Mr Peters says. “This will be our third visit to ...
Construction of a new mental health facility at Te Nikau Grey Hospital in Greymouth is today one step closer, Mental Health Minister Matt Doocey says. “This $27 million facility shows this Government is delivering on its promise to boost mental health care and improve front line services,” Mr Doocey says. ...
New Zealand is committing nearly $50 million to a package supporting sustainable Pacific fisheries development over the next four years, Foreign Minister Winston Peters and Oceans and Fisheries Minister Shane Jones announced today. “This support consisting of a range of initiatives demonstrates New Zealand’s commitment to assisting our Pacific partners ...
Associate Education Minister David Seymour says proposed changes to the Education and Training Amendment Bill will ensure charter schools have more flexibility to negotiate employment agreements and are equipped with the right teaching resources. “Cabinet has agreed to progress an amendment which means unions will not be able to initiate ...
In response to serious concerns around oversight, overspend and a significant deterioration in financial outlook, the Board of Health New Zealand will be replaced with a Commissioner, Health Minister Dr Shane Reti announced today. “The previous government’s botched health reforms have created significant financial challenges at Health NZ that, without ...
Minister for Space and Science, Innovation and Technology Judith Collins will travel to Adelaide tomorrow for space and science engagements, including speaking at the Australian Space Forum. While there she will also have meetings and visits with a focus on space, biotechnology and innovation. “New Zealand has a thriving space ...
Climate Change Minister Simon Watts will travel to China on Saturday to attend the Ministerial on Climate Action meeting held in Wuhan. “Attending the Ministerial on Climate Action is an opportunity to advocate for New Zealand climate priorities and engage with our key partners on climate action,” Mr Watts says. ...
Oceans and Fisheries Minister Shane Jones is travelling to the Solomon Islands tomorrow for meetings with his counterparts from around the Pacific supporting collective management of the region’s fisheries. The 23rd Pacific Islands Forum Fisheries Committee and the 5th Regional Fisheries Ministers’ Meeting in Honiara from 23 to 26 July ...
The Government today launched the Military Style Academy Pilot at Te Au rere a te Tonga Youth Justice residence in Palmerston North, an important part of the Government’s plan to crackdown on youth crime and getting youth offenders back on track, Minister for Children, Karen Chhour said today. “On the ...
The Government has welcomed news the NZ Transport Agency (NZTA) has begun work to replace nine priority bridges across the country to ensure our state highway network remains resilient, reliable, and efficient for road users, Transport Minister Simeon Brown says.“Increasing productivity and economic growth is a key priority for the ...
Acting Prime Minister David Seymour has been in contact throughout the evening with senior officials who have coordinated a whole of government response to the global IT outage and can provide an update. The Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet has designated the National Emergency Management Agency as the ...
New Zealand and Japan will continue to step up their shared engagement with the Pacific, Foreign Minister Winston Peters says. “New Zealand and Japan have a strong, shared interest in a free, open and stable Pacific Islands region,” Mr Peters says. “We are pleased to be finding more ways ...
New developments in the heart of North Island forestry country will reinvigorate their communities and boost economic development, Regional Development Minister Shane Jones says. Mr Jones visited Kaingaroa and Kawerau in Bay of Plenty today to open a landmark community centre in the former and a new connecting road in ...
President Adeang, fellow Ministers, honourable Diet Member Horii, Ambassadors, distinguished guests. Minasama, konnichiwa, and good afternoon, everyone. Distinguished guests, it’s a pleasure to be here with you today to talk about New Zealand’s foreign policy reset, the reasons for it, the values that underpin it, and how it ...
Last summer when Matairangi burned, Ginny and Tom stood at the window of their lounge, watching kākā shoot skyward from the burning trees. From the distance, they looked to Ginny like pages torn from books and thrown into a bonfire. It was Tom, voice tight, who told her it was ...
Opinion: The Canadian short story writer Alice Munro – winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2013 – died in May at the age of 92. Her work was about “the damage people inflict on one another in the name of love”, Deborah Treisman wrote in the New Yorker. ...
This month marks two years since the most powerful telescope ever built sent its first pictures back to earth. From its lofty vantage point, beyond the moon in orbit around the sun, the James Webb Space Telescope was tuned to observe the first stars and galaxies being born soon after ...
Comment: After Climate Change Minister Simon Watts’ preview several weeks ago, I had some optimism about the Government’s emissions reduction plan. Now I’ve read the discussion document, that hope has been dashed. How can the Government propose a plan that wants to take New Zealand taxpayers’ hard-earned money, and spend ...
Christopher Luxon: hurdles The little man from National jumps hurdles in his sleep. He’s quite good at it in his dreams and even though the reality doesn’t quite match up you have to give him credit for getting up every morning and crashing into the very first hurdle of the ...
Comment: It was a good two hours into the conversation when Tyrone Marks raised the most basic of questions when I first spoke to him in 2017. “They didn’t explain the things they did to me. They never told me why. And they still haven’t. There’s no explanation for it. ...
Madeleine Chapman rounds out Death Week on The Spinoff with a final recommendation. You can read all of our Death Week coverage here. Nothing forces you to reflect on your life and relationships quite like proximity to death. For those whose nearest and dearest have died, there are reasonably obvious ...
Whitney Greene takes us through her life in television, including the TV character she’d like to plan a funeral for and her cow lung catastrophe on The Traitors NZ. “If the phone rings, I have to answer it,” Whitney Greene from The Traitors NZ warns as we begin our My ...
Maddie Ballard reviews the debut essay collection of Pōneke writer Flora Feltham.In ‘The Raw Material’, the longest essay in Flora Feltham’s dazzling debut collection, the author heads out for a run after hours of weaving and sees the world turn to textile. “Pounding along the Parade, I saw the ...
Andy Christiansen, one half of the experimental rock-pop duo TRiPS, shares the tunes inspiring the band’s perfect weekend and new release. “Good speakers, good food, good music, no distractions”: that’s all you need to enjoy the psychedelic stylings of TRiPS, a new band formed by Fly My Pretties’ Barnaby Weir ...
Celebrating our quadrennial opportunity to become experts in a bunch of sports we never normally watch.The games of the XXXIII Olympiad are upon us. Paris will host this year’s showcase of sporting and athletic prowess, which means some late-night and early-morning viewing for us in Aotearoa.But what sports ...
The photograph is striking and beautiful, but also disturbing – a reminder that my love for John was often entangled in shame.The Sunday Essay is made possible thanks to the support of Creative New Zealand.In the spring of 1980, in Dunedin, shortly before his death, someone took a photograph ...
Get to know Babushka, our latest Dog of the Month. This feature was offered as a reward during our What’s Eating Aotearoa PledgeMe campaign. Thank you to Babu’s humans, Jo and Isabel, for their support. Dog name: Babushka (Babu for short) Age: 2Breed: Border Collie X poodleIf rescued, ...
Pacific Media Watch A Lebanese photojournalist who was severely wounded during an Israeli air strike in south Lebanon carried the Olympic torch in Paris this week in honour of her peers who have been wounded and killed in the field — especially in Gaza and Lebanon. Christina Assi of Agence ...
The first report in a five-part web series focused on the 15th Triennial Conference of Pacific Women taking place in the Marshall Islands this week.SPECIAL REPORT:By Netani Rika in Majuro Women continue to fight for justice 70 years after the first nuclear tests by the United States caused ...
Christopher Luxon has joined with Australia and Canada's leaders in voicing support for US President Joe Biden's ceasefire deal between Israel and Hamas. ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Michelle Grattan, Professorial Fellow, University of Canberra The 2022 election brought the “teal wave” into parliament. The next election will test whether teals, who occupy what were Liberal seats, and other independents can maintain their momentum. Joining us on the Podcast ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Ian Musgrave, Senior lecturer in Pharmacology, University of Adelaide Pixavri/Shutterstock A major Federal Court class action has been dismissed this week after Justice Michael Lee ruled there was not enough evidence to prove the weedkiller Roundup causes cancer. Plaintiff Kelvin ...
In The Week in Politics: politicians have to decide what to do about child abuse, Health NZ is booked in for major surgery and Darleen Tana returns. ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Clare Corbould, Associate Professor, Contemporary Histories Research Group, Deakin University Mainstream media are surprisingly muted at the prospect of the world’s most powerful nation being led for the first time by a woman – specifically a woman of colour, Vice President Kamala ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Rebecca Bennett, PhD Student, Associate Research Fellow, Deakin University Last week, a drone delivery company called Wing (owned by Google’s parent company, Alphabet) started operating in Melbourne. Some 250,000 residents in parts of the city’s eastern suburbs can now order food from ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Jonathan Foo, Lecturer, Physiotherapy, Monash University pikselstock/Shutterstock In the next 40 years in Australia, it’s predicted the number of Australians aged 65 and over will more than double, while the number of people aged 85 and over will more than triple. ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Katrina Grant, Research Associate, Power Institute for Arts and Visual Culture, University of Sydney Jonas Åkerström’s 1790 work, Session of the Accademia dell’Arcadia on August 17 1788.Nationalmuseum/Cecilia Heisser Ever wondered whether you’d have a better chance at winning an Olympic gold ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Alexandra Jones, Program Lead, Food Governance, George Institute for Global Health wavebreakmedia/Shutterstock On Thursday, Australian and New Zealand food ministers at state, federal and national levels met to thrash out what’s next for health star ratings on packaged foods. Now, after ...
The Abuse in Care report found many Pacific survivors lost their connections to their culture and language, resulting in trauma that has been carried from generation to generation. ...
In the regulatory review, ECC intends to suggest that ERO focus on curriculum delivery reviews rather than the Ministry, because it’s not efficient or effective to have two agencies with radically different approaches climbing over each other. ...
Te Rūnanga Nui o Ngā Kura Kaupapa Māori invites the current government to work in partnership with them to develop a pathway forward, including the development of a parallel pathway and meaningful policy and strategy for Kura Kaupapa Māori ...
If you haven’t started watching yet, Tara Ward begs you to reconsider. This is an excerpt from our weekly pop culture newsletter Rec Room. Sign up here. In the world of New Zealand reality television, we have many gems in our crown. There’s the delicious second season of the Celebrity Treasure ...
A new poem by Fiona Kidman. The clothes of the dead I did not keep my mother’s furry red beret for long nor the stringy scarves that adorned the necks of my aunts, although I have kept tag ends of gold, the rings and trinkets they wore, the brooches no ...
The government’s announcement that it will re-open the foreshore and seabed controversy by changing the rules on recognising centuries-old Māori customary title for a third time goes against the rule of law and New Zealand values,” Mr Tipa says. ...
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 Lioness by Emily Perkins (Bloomsbury, $25) Roarrrr! Perkins’ brilliant, award-winning, Marian-Keyes anointed, darkly funny, long ...
The 2004 Act vested ownership of the foreshore and seabed in the Crown, extinguishing any Māori claims to ownership and causing widespread outrage and protests among Māori communities. ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Antje Deckert, Associate Professor (Criminology), Auckland University of Technology Getty Images Despite the connection between institutional harm and gang membership made clear in this week’s mammoth royal commission abuse-in care report, the government seems unlikely to soften its “get tough on ...
From Lewis Clareburt in the swimming to the start of the rowing – the first seven days of Paris 2024 promise to be big for New Zealand. There are few events that bring the country together quite like an Olympic Games. Nothing quite matches the excitement of getting up in ...
Groundbreaking local science just showed up in the most surprising of places: the season finale of The Kardashians. In the season five finale of The Kardashians last night, several members of the family gathered together in one of their signature empty, cream-coloured rooms to hear test results that had been ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Amin Saikal, Emeritus professor of Middle Eastern and Central Asian Studies, Australian National University The Middle East is on the brink of a possibly devastating regional war, with hostilities between Israel and Hezbollah reaching an extremely dangerous level. Washington has engaged in ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Laura Elizabeth Eades, Rheumatologist, Monash University Lupus is an inflammatory autoimmune illness, where the body’s immune system mistakenly attacks itself. Lupus can affect virtually any part of the body, although it most commonly affects the skin, joints and kidneys. The symptoms ...
A law firm that specialises in working with survivors of abuse in State care is disappointed that the Government fails to recognise that its boot camps can be directly compared to previous boot camps from the 1990s and 2000s. ...
Dying is a natural part of life, like updating your Wof or seeing your hairdresser, but without the word-of-mouth recs that help guarantee a good service. What if we changed that? Dying Reviews received by The Spinoff have had the names of organisations redacted while Hospice NZ collects further data. ...
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According to Dr Simon Thornley, NZ should move to alert level 2 on April 22.
"Lockdown was appropriate when there was so little data…but the data is now clear, this is not the disaster we feared and prepared for. Elimination of this virus is likely not achievable and is not necessary."
Thornley said the risk to most working people was low and likened it, for most people, to a seasonal influenza virus.
He said the plan was developed amid concern the Government's strategy was over-the-top and likely to 'substantially harm the nation's long term health and well being, social fabric, economy and education'".
That is remarkably similar to what Dr Knut Kittkowski has said.
"We had two other SARS viruses before. Or, coronaviruses. It’s not the first coronavirus that comes out, and it won’t be the last. And for all respiratory diseases, we have the same type of an epidemic. If you leave it alone, it comes for two weeks, it peaks, and it goes for two weeks and it’s gone…There are no indications that this flu is fundamentally different from every other flu. We know what happened in China, we know what happened in South Korea, we know what happened, or is happening, in Europe. There are no indications that anything is different from a regular flu. Maybe it’s a bit worse than other flus—could be?
https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/health/coronavirus/120984583/coronavirus-lockdown-rules-should-be-relaxed-health-experts-say
https://ratical.org/PerspectivesOnPandemic-II.html
Surveys show NZrs are quite happy to be in lockdown, and ok to extend if necessary. There are also indications the virus is not like the seasonal flu, it's stronger, confusing, and very, very contagious. Of course you'll find scientists who disagree, such is the nature of scientists, lucky we have leaders here in NZ who don't want to risk peoples lives, because what they have seen in China, South Korea and, Europe.
care to link to the survey?
Here's the stuff story about the survey.
https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/health/coronavirus/120979024/most-new-zealanders-willing-to-extend-covid19-lockdown-pain–survey
Andre – completely off topic – But how many Republicans does it take to change a light bulb?
None of them would have the slightest clue on how to do it.
Almost correct!
The answer is:
None! Trump tells them it is fixed and then they sit in the dark and applaud.
The other thought I might have gone with is none of them have ever done anything useful or helpful in their lives until now, why break the habit of a lifetime.
60% of whom asked?
where asked?
when asked?
extended for how long? A week, two weeks? another 8 weeks? 🙂
cause i don't see that addressed
and this is a bit of a laugh right?
https://www.researchnz.com/pdf/Media%20Releases/2020/Covid19Concerns2.pdf
There is always one halfwit that wants to make a name for himself, going against the flow.
Supported by another, Gareth Morgan, who values an individuals life at $10 000, dollars.
Supported by another, Gareth Morgan, who values an individuals life at $10 000, dollars.
Did you write that specially for me? I'm touched![wink wink](https://cdn.ckeditor.com/4.11.3/full-all/plugins/smiley/images/wink_smile.png)
Gareth Morgan's stooge huh? That makes sense with using lowball negotiation tactics during a medical crisis (speculatively):
A businessman wants money and doesn't care if others die because they can afford to continue to self-isolate and teleconference. But needs the lockdown to reduce to level 3 for at least a couple of weeks for their current trading positions to pay off. So they hire (donate to associated research/ treatment facilities) a more plausible academic to front for them and say that we should really be at level 2 or less of a lockdown.
The temptation is for people with no specialist knowledge to try to reconcile the conflicting claims of; some doctors saying level 4, while others call for level 2. Level 3 would seem to be an appropriate compromise then, if you weren't aware of how you were being played!
And of course, once there are a rash of new outbreaks within a month, and we return to level 4; the businessman would have had opportunity to trade their assets into a more personal favourable pattern. The Dr stooge should really be considering if what he has got from this deal is really worth his reputation as a health expert, or human being!
Two thoughts.
One is that Gareth Morgan seems to have been referencing a model from Pharmac Cost Utility Analysis which uses the number $10k at some point. I've scanned it but there is a lot more to it than some reductionist 'value of a human life' number.
These sorts of technical analysis' that appear to put a cold number on the value of a human life are always unattractive from a purely ethical perspective, but in effect are really just one way to ration otherwise limited resources. For instance if Pharmac hypothetically spent a large amount saving the lives of a few dozen cancer sufferers, while not spending the same sum on reducing pain and suffering for thousands of others … how to reconcile this competing demand in a manner that can be justified to the public?
If we just left the exercise to 'medical experts' they would do a wonderful job in their own domain, but anything else would suffer. This is the argument that we need to have, doctors and epidemiologists are not economists or business people … nor are they government.
The religious argument, which is my starting point, says that the value of human life transcends the economic one. My view is that all life is in it's own degree is sacred. Utilitarian arguments that place a dollar value on life is a fatal compromise with this principle.
Yet we cannot piously sit above the fray and not get our hands dirty; decisions made in the harsh light of scarcity must be made. Just as doctors in the ICU wards have to play God over who dies and who doesn't, we have to decide how much of our economy we must sacrifice to this virus.
Because at the extreme, if we crash the economy totally we all die from deprivation anyhow. So at some point well before that we will be forced to make a decision on how to end this lockdown, and on what criteria. Economic speakers like Morgan will necessarily fight the economy’s corner … and with sound moral justification. Just as people here fighting the corner for those vulnerable to this demon virus, will also claim the moral high ground.
Accusing each other of bad faith at the outset isn't going to progress the necessary discussion helpfully. We have a puzzle in front of us, how to extract ourselves from this lockdown. Getting into it was easy, and now we have a massive sunk cost invested in it … getting out will be much harder and demand the very best of all New Zealanders.
RL
Am I getting these two thoughts right?
1/ Morgan is conflating pharmac's budgetary restrictions with the value of a human life.
2/ Economic collapse will lead to social problems (putting that very mildly).
Lots of words to wade through there, so wanted to confirm before critiquing. My immediate reaction was in regards to your equating human worth to spirituality:
Do atheists who are completely unconvinced by religious doctrine not then have any value? What about people who follow a different religion? Many of those have an "it's not a sin to kill and steal from unbelievers" clause in their tenets. I would argue these assumptions underly the colonial era horrors in Aotearoa (and much of the rest of the world).
I wonder if they go to Church?
Research shows that children bought up religious, have less empathy for others, and are more likely to despise those outside their religious/social group.
Morgan thinks it is the "economy", that pays Souxie.
No.
It's the market gardener who grows her food, the drivers, supermarket workers and food factory workers that supply her food.
It's the builder who built her house, the technicians, who make things she uses, the Bangladeshi that makes her clothes.
The Teachers who helped educate her, the Doctors that kept her healthy, the council workers that keep up fresh water, sewage disposal and drainage supplies.
Society.
Using the word 'religion' always gets a reaction from the determined 'non-religious' types that I don't care to wade into. This is not the forum to explore that theme.
Let me confine my answer to this; the idea that 'all life is sacred' finds it's most deep seated and durable home in the religious context. That does not exclude other moral systems, nor denigrates them without cause.
Many of those have an "it's not a sin to kill and steal from unbelievers" clause in their tenets.
Mine doesn't. Emphatically.
Is it not? Why? Because you assert that to be the case? I would have thought that OM was indeed the appropriate forum for such a discussion.
If you don't want people disagree with your religion then don't use it as a basis for discussion.
1/ Morgan is conflating pharmac's budgetary restrictions with the value of a human life.
Referencing Pharmac seems like a pertinent gambit in the context of the debate he's engaged in, but it's probably a mistake to put the man into box based on one short tweet.
We've been hearing from Gareth for a long time, but, like way too many economists, he has too narrow a view.
Going by his past history, I doubt if he is callous as that tweet showed, however.
Thanks RL, couldn't be bothered researching Morgan's foolishness myself.
Going out on a limb, it seems to me that he half-assed it to make two fundamental errors:
Dude still hasn't learned that you can't write public policy on the back of an envelope.
Yeah. That looks like a good summary. That Pharmac CUA document is well laid out, and it makes a nuanced argument illustrating some of the very real challenges faced in running a health system. Sometimes I think we should be just a little more appreciative that our public service does function better than OK most of the time.
As for Morgan, on his humanitarian track record going back decades we know he's a decent guy, but who among us hasn't made mistakes in the course of a fast moving thread?![blush blush](https://cdn.ckeditor.com/4.11.3/full-all/plugins/smiley/images/embarrassed_smile.png)
But does he ever own his mistakes?
Going by his NZ track record, his actual persona is most people's online-at-three-in-the-morning-after-a-few-drinks persona: when his unchecked recollections or his graciously gifted reckons are challenged, he spits the dummy.
At least Ardern becoming PM made that pig eat his lipstick.
Was it about halfway to the 5% threshold that TOP got last election? Anyone here think that a Bridges/ Morgan government would have responded better to the Pandemic than our present one?
You're welcome.
Thornley and Wittkowski appear to be arguing for letting the disease run rampant through the ranks of the vulnerable, and appear to be meh about the idea of overloading the health system and subsequent damage that would cause. But haven't get the courage to explicitly spell that out.
They appear to be dishonestly downplaying the seriousness of COVID-19 by comparing it to regular seasonal flu. IT’S NOT THE FUCKING FLU, IT'S WAY MORE SERIOUS;. I’ve got family that have personally experienced COVID-19 and are working on the frontlines of dealing with it that are corroborating the media reports of how damaging it is. IT’S NOT A FUCKING MEDIA BEATUP.
The choice of when to drop down in alert levels and open up restrictions comes down to balancing the extra marginal problems caused by staying at higher levels for a bit longer versus the risk of having to go back into higher levels because of a subsequent breakout. Seems to me the marginal extra problems caused by extending the lockdown by another week or two are really quite small, especially relative to the problems caused by having to go back into lockdown in the future.
Given what we know about asymptomatic carriers being infectious for maybe a couple of weeks, it would only take a chain of two or three asymptomatic infections to carry the disease undetected through the four week lockdwon. Considering how many infections we know about, the chances of undetected asymptomatic chains seem awfully high. Each one of which could cause a fresh breakout.
So. Ross, if the experts were to assess the chances of a new breakout requiring a new lockdown to be say 50% if the current lockdown was lifted on April 22, but were say 10% if the current lockdown were extended to five weeks, and 1% of the lockdown was extended to six weeks, what would you want to do?
The irony for Ross if we do lift early, then an outbreak occurs, we will go in lockdown again, for maybe longer, repeat and rinse.
I also think the likes of Ross, Thornley and Wittkowski are starry-eyed about what benefits there might be from coming out of lockdown early. There is now no "normal" we can return to. That timeline is gone, it's an alternate universe pinched off from the one we now inhabit.
The question now what difference does another week or two or three of extra lockdown make when it comes to building our new future. I'd guess that difference is really very small, and any benefit from coming out early would be very fragile and easily shattered by having to go back up the lockdown scale.
We certainly appear to be in a position where elimination within New Zealand is possible and within our grasp, and would be a very good thing compared with having to deal with recurring waves of this disease. It seems foolish to put this at risk for what would likely be a small financial gain for a few people.
That is going to be the danger. We can’t go out of lockdown until we’re sure that any outbreak can be identified and swamped immediately.
This means, apart from anything else, that the district level chief health officers can impose local constraints up to an including lockdowns without any idiotic interference from national or local political and business interference. Forget large gatherings for quite some time.
On thing that is quite apparent with this disease is that cluster management is essential. Contact tracing using cellphones it probably going to be the best tool available.
I think maybe he's a funeral director.
He could well be, Gabby. A bit greedy if so – with all us boomers about to 'move on' from this earthly coil, undertaking was already set to be a growth industry even without Covid19..
Except that funeral directing isn't exactly big business these days.
Well that's the point.
Might pay to have another read because they both appear to be advocating isolating the vulnerable and let everyone else go BAU.
I am very concerned also about evidence indicating that asymptomatic people being carriers.
Which begs the question why there appears to be a huge reluctance on behalf of our leaders to encourage, no, make it mandatory that those providing routine daily care to the 'vulnerable' wear masks and gowns. Especially those providing routine supports to a number of clients.
The total rejection of this basic precautionary approach is baffling to say the least.
Confusing times indeed.
I'm going with two theories atm. A level of incompetence based on the system being generally bad at understanding and responding to the needs of disabled people. Or, it's the pragmatics of managing public health at the population level where individual needs are not easily counted, in this case they're taking into account the need to have PPE reserves in stock in case we end up with an epidemic in NZ.
Neither really explain it though, so there's a third factor for me, poor communication (within the system and with the public). It reminds me of WINZ in a way, the system is so dysfunctional that there are areas where it's really hard for things to work.
Did you see this? Looks like some MSM traction at last.
https://www.tvnz.co.nz/one-news/new-zealand/were-not-getting-masks-gloves-because-ppe-confusion-say-disability-support-workers-v1
Bit of 'a', bit of 'b', a largish dollop of 'c'.
Uncle Ashley (and I mean that in the nicest possible way🙄) has told us repeatedly that there is no shortage of PPE. Over and over again.
I think he doth protest too much. Or.
He's trying to convince himself as well as us. (And if a thing is said often enough it will become fact.)
Or Someone has his ear who hasn't a fucking clue what a homecarer does in an average day and how many clients they will visit and how it has become routine to work when you're sick because if you don't turn up that person could lie stinking and starving all day because it's not like there's shit tons lining up to do the work. This Someone hasn't yet grasped the fact that asymptomatic people will be spreading the virus and it is also not always possible to smother an innocent sneeze or cough when you have your gloved hands full of soiled materials.
The Someone advising Uncle Ashley needs to get out and do the fucking work for a week…hands on….then return to their ivory tower from whence they make recommendations that will ultimately cause the deaths of frail elderly and disabled.
"….they make recommendations that will ultimately cause the deaths of frail elderly and disabled."
not to mention the carers themselves
Ah. The carers.
Considered largely worthless, despite a number of claims being taken before the courts.
And besides its womens' work.
These sacrifices are expected of us.
They certainly dont appear to have been considered as yet
"Uncle Ashley (and I mean that in the nicest possible way🙄) has told us repeatedly that there is no shortage of PPE."
Right. But it took me a while to understand the management speak, which is that if you control the supply in the way they are currently, then there really is a big stockpile to rely on. If otoh, we allowed people to have access to the masks they need (institutional staff/clients, and home staff/clients), then the assessment of stock might look quite different.
And yep to the people who have AB's ear. That it's taken this week for the home care sector to even enter the public debate tells me a lot about where general knowledge is at.
What I expect to happen next is the supply will be loosened up to meet the needs of some in the disability sector, but not others, because the MoH doesn’t have a a great grasp of what the disability sector covers.
Clumsy, top-down system, where managers rely on what the people answerable to them, tell them… with increasing disconnect between the people on the frontline and managers at the top of the pyramid.
Are home are workers managed by private companies that DHB’s contract the work to?
All homebased care in NZ be it funded through MOH:DSS, ACC, DHBs and MSD has been contracted out to profit and non profits for decades. There is GOLD in them there 'ills and at one point there were almost as many contracted providers as there were clients needing the care.
ACC has not done too badly…not because they love the cripples more than the rest, but because they are legally obliged to provide the care and keep claimants from further harm. ACC claimants have entitlements. The rest do not.
Accordingly the system for non ACC disabled, frail elderly and those with chronic health conditions are caught up in the endless pissing contest between the various government funders and the Contracted Providers.
Life, for those who need a high level of care, is often a shit sandwich. And it's never far from lunchtime.
If Sacha were still around here on TS he'd be able to provide valuble knowledge and insight on the genesis of the current system.
Although 'system' is not quite an accurate term to use under the circumstances.
"ACC claimants have entitlements. The rest do not."
Lots of NZers fail to recognise this.
To top things off, apparently lots of home care workers didn't get paid this week.
https://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/PO2004/S00097/home-support-workers-are-on-the-front-line-so-why-havent-they-been-paid.htm
I don't have time to do a post this morning, but if anyone finds out more on this please let me know, I will try and get something up later in the day. Particularly concerning is this being the final straw and workers quitting the sector.
Bloomfield is now starting to appear before the epidemic committee – I'm watching on Parliament channel on freeview. It's livestreaming online somewhere.
Be interesting to see what questions he's asked.
He's starting with some comments/statement.
From what I can make out…
Because of the Guarenteed Hours claim, employers have been obliged to pay homecare workers for an (agreed?) number of hours per week whether they work those hours or not. Accordingly employers have signed up some(many?) workers to the bateset minimum per week. Of course a number of workers actually do more hours per week than the GH and now for some reason those extra hours are not there. I imagine there is a deal of confusion of how many of the hours are Guaranteed. Chickens coming home to roost time.
Why the number if hours worked has gone down Ican only speculate.
But, I am guessing that for various reasons, most likely keeping Grandma safe from un PPE'd carers, family are stepping in to provide the care themselves…paid or unpaid.
Good grief, what a mess.
Might also be the DHB telling elderly people they can't have their housework done during lock down. Don't know if that got reversed, there was something in the MSM about it a week or so ago.
thanks Carolyn, would love to know if the home care worker issues come up.
No. Home care workers did not come up. Basically, Nat & ACT MPs are more focused on business issues and businesses being able to re-start operating ASAP.
Some Labour & GP Maori MPs on the committee raised some important issues about the amount of testing of Maori &Pacific people and whether there is adequate identification of C-19 among these communities – they are concerned there isn't.
This made it clear to me that there is no MP really representing the disabled and home care workers.
Bloomfield did make a general comment in his intro about the patchiness of front line workers getting access to PPEs. He said mostly it is working well, but there have been some gaps.
No further clarification of this, and no MP on the committee picked up on this – except maybe Seymour, but not specifically with reference to home care workers, and not with the vigilance he interrogated business issues.
There was an appearance from the Health top manager in Aussie – I think equivalent to Bloomfield. Questions were asked why Aussie went to equivalent of our level of Alert 3.5 with similar results to NZ's level 4.
Differences between the countries were highlighted eg in Skegg's appearance – basically, Aussie has a higher proportion of people in hospital in NZ. Also, the spread of cases is different, with more spread around the country in NZ.
Plus Aussie has been able to implement more and faster contact tracing than NZ. Also, while more businesses have been able to operate in Aussie, the general public are avoiding using them so there has been a big drop in business.
It was said that lot of testing, fast results, and quick contact tracing will be as good as having a vaccine as when we go down the alert levels.
And when the many vulnerable people, who tend to be the most disadvantaged and in the most precarious employment, run out of money and have to break isolation, and go to work?
Baffling indeed. There is no point in having PPE and not making it available to use.
If there is not enough PPE available for those who need it someone has not done their job. The population is only 5 million not 50 million.
Were I in a position to need a carer to use PPE and not use it, I would feel resentful because of having to fight for a carer to wear it.
I would rather take the approach of overdoing the PPE and not undergoing it.
I know that you have been doing a great job for many decades (being a carer and an advocate) and that you have not been recognised for your exceptional work.
I think you wrote that the accident was pre ACC cover.
Thornley and Wittkowski appear to be arguing for letting the disease run rampant through the ranks of the vulnerable
Actually, they're arguing the opposite.
Don’t trust all of those experts, instead trust this one expert Knut, who pushes for herd immunity (let the kids go to school).
Sweden springs to mind JS
I note that the home of "herd immunity as public policy", the UK, is beginning to dig mass graves.
And. Their "economy" is still, fucked.
"… appear to be arguing for letting the disease run rampant through the ranks of the vulnerable"
People arguing for thinning the herd very rarely (I've yet to see someone do this, but maybe??) define who they think the vulnerable are.
It seems to be some notion that is really old people who are already in death's waiting room. These people are going to die anyway, they suggest, or if they acknowledge that the vulnerable is a bigger proportion of the population, they suggest we can somehow separate them from the rest of society and 'protect' them, but don't provide a how, or where, that can be done.
A few numbers:
in 2018
in 2013
https://www.ehinz.ac.nz/indicators/population-vulnerability/people-with-chronic-health-conditions/
That's not even counting people on treatment for serious, but recoverable diseases (e.g. most cancers) or people immune-suppressed for other reasons.
Many of these are the vulnerable.
Being ok with people with underlying conditions becoming ill with Covid-19 means we're ok with an overwhelmed health system, because even if they don't die from the disease, they'll take a whole lot longer to treat.
Moreover, there seems to be some long-term lung damage in survivors of serious Covid-19 – what's the cost of that in human and economic terms? do they know that this will be manageable? That were not creating another whole group of chronically ill people? They need to add a little detail to their opinions.
I'd like to think the overwhelming public support for the Level 4 lockdown is the general population know exactly who the vulnerable are and RedLogix suggests below (1.4), they value them in human terms.
The question I'm putting to you Ross is this. Are you over 50? Do you have close family over that age? Or someone otherwise younger but immune compromised for one of many reasons?
Are you prepared to have them, or yourself, die horribly in order to prove your idea right?
A quick yes or no will do.
A quick yes or no will do.
There's four questions there. And you seem to want to shoot the messenger. You should direct your questions to the experts, such as Dr Simon Thornley. I suspect he's not revelling in the fact that people have died from the virus.
But you must have missed the comment from the expert I referred to yesterday – he said that millions of people die each year from TB, malaria and prescribed drugs they didn’t need. He asked where the perspective was. That's a good question. Maybe you could have a go at answering it. 🙂
[I gave you a warning yesterday in a comment, but you didn’t take heed.
You dump controversial quotes with links here and then refuse to engage in good faith.
You’re refusing to answer questions, you appeal to authority, and you hide behind the people you quote, the so-called experts:
This is not good enough.
You are the commenter here, you lay out your arguments, and when these arguments are challenged, a (robust) debate ensues (or not, in your case). If you cannot or don’t want to engage in debate, you should stop commenting here, because it is starting to like denialist troll comments again, similar to your ill-considered and ill-perceived/received comments on CC.
I told you this yesterday:
I’m putting up a Post tomorrow and out of precaution, I will put you in Pre-Moderation. Depending on your next few comments, you will keep your commenting privileges here or you will end up in the Blacklist for the rest of the year – Incognito]
Are you, or your family, prepared to die for your belief that this bug is pretty harmless?
That is one simple question.
I think Ross would rather gaslight than answer questions.
Red,
That seems like a rhetorical question.
I assume you drive a car. Why do you do so when there’s a chance you might be killed? (That question isn’t rhetorical.) More than 300 people died on the roads last year so the risk is clearly greater than zero.
I drive a car because I consider the risk to be acceptable and because I consider the benefits outweigh the costs. I imagine the Icelandic Government took a similar approach when it decided against lockdown.
So the short answer is yes you are willing to take the 1 in 5 odds you will get seriously ill (it's a fucking nasty bug you really don't want to get) and about a 1 in 40 chance you will die.
And if I hypothetically assumed there are say 10 other people you are close to, family, old friends, close associates … then multiply those odds by 10. In other words several people you care for will get seriously ill and you'll be worried sick they will die. And about there is a good chance one of them will.
And that plays out for everyone in the country. This year. Mass grief and bad consciences do not a happy country make.
Most of us have looked at that bet and turned it down.
(And that’s without invoking any moral argument.)
Red
You've plucked figures out of the air to make some obscure point. (1 in 5 odds of getting seriously ill? That suggests that about a million NZers have gotten – or could soon get – seriously ill. In Iceland – which isn’t in lockdown – the reality is nothing like your figures.)
Let's get back to facts. There were 353 road deaths last year in NZ, and thousands of serious injuries. Now I presume you and your family are quite happy to travel by car even though the chances of death (or serious injury) are non-zero. Why do you make that choice? Presumably because you think the risk is acceptable.
People "accept" the "risk of travelling by car" because, in their own experience, they have been safe.
Part of the psychology about how people rank risk.
You can see it working with those who now say the “lockdown should be shortened or is unnecessary”, because they see their income drop, but not the deaths that would have happened without it.
I've no idea why we should use Iceland as the baseline comparison, the generally accepted figure some weeks back was that about 20% of people who become infected have a serious, debilitating illness considerably worse than seasonal flu.
More recent data from the US is much higher, around 40%
As for the CFR it's up around 5.9% globally.
Any data has to be understood in the context in which it was gathered and the timeframe involved.
Ross loves Iceland because it imposed controls <i>just shy of lockdown</i>, so he gets to pretend lockdown isn't necessary.
They just did stuff like:
But no "lockdown". Just nowhere interesting to go.
I imagine the Icelandic Government took a similar approach when it decided against lockdown.
Unemployment is increasing in iceland,nurses have had a paycut.
Iceland is flying in medical supplies from China,and is about to undertake another emergency experiment on Chloroquine .
https://icelandmonitor.mbl.is/news/news/2020/04/07/shipment_of_antimalarial_drug_has_arrived/
Oh and Rio Tinto wants renegotiate its power costs,with the overhanging threat of closure of its Alu smelter.
hHow about an employee or customer? Or one of their family members (so they'd have to take time off work or be late paying because they're ill or having to look after an ill family member)? Maybe that'll hit home for Ross…
the expert I referred to yesterday – he said that millions of people die each year from TB, malaria and prescribed drugs
Like most western countries we don't have Malaria in NZ because we don't have the mosquito that spreads it. Cases of TB here are about 300 per year yet we have had over 1300 of Covid in a couple of months even with the lockdown and other measures. TB can be treated with antibiotics and you need to "live or work closely with an infected person to catch the disease". That prescribed drugs thing is a nonsense because drugs also save lives.
Stop talking out your arse. It disgusts me that you see this, like Climate Change, as an opportunity to troll.
https://www.health.govt.nz/your-health/conditions-and-treatments/diseases-and-illnesses/tuberculosis-disease
edit: there is also a vaccine for TB but it is only given to high risk groups. .
See my Moderation note @ 9:07 AM.
Remember two weeks ago when Thornley said we should follow Sweden’s excellent example? When he told Mike Hosking that the mortality rate wasn’t that big a deal and they were only old people anyway? When he quoted the Stanford University guy who claimed that the Diamond Princess mortality rate suggested that, if extrapolated to the US population 3.3 million people would get infected and only 10,000 would die?
https://www.newsroom.co.nz/2020/04/02/1111326/navigating-a-public-spat-between-scientists
Post that to New York
and we can save 11 billion per annum (and increasing) by euthanising everyone over the age of 64
Just Stuff click baiting ? These seem to align pretty well with USA repug talking points. But hey all we need are a few unresolved cases (like the korean #35?) who transferred to 1031 others for it to all take off again,
"Lockdown was appropriate when there was so little data…but the data is now clear, this is not the disaster we feared and prepared for. Elimination of this virus is likely not achievable and is not necessary."
The data is clear that lockdown is working,and obviously the subsequent data excites idiots.
https://twitter.com/MaxAbrahms/status/1248736875667427332
Longer version of what Poission just said.
https://arstechnica.com/science/2020/04/no-senator-science-cant-do-away-with-models/
Thornley et al make some reasonable points that should be considered along with others. It's important to debate various approaches, as everyone is learning as we go about the virus, it's effects and the effects of various degrees of restrictions and economic impact.
But some things Thornley says make me wonder if he is too distant from the real world. Like:
I think that many people and their families will have some concerns about reducing a life expectancy of 12 months down to 2 weeks for 'the greater good'.
Also:
If all under 60s have most restrictions lifted it's certain that the virus will pick up and spread more, and data shows it can spread quite quickly even when precautions are taken (health care workers are getting it).
So this not only increases the relatively low risk to under 60s by a bit, possibly quite a bit, but also either dramatically increases the risks of over 60s who want to go grocery shopping or go to get health care (doctors' surgeries and hospitals will get a lot more risky), or they will have to switch to even greater isolation than they now have to comply with.
I presume Thornley is under 60, and I suspect he hasn't talked this through with his grandparents or anyone over 60.
I suspect so too. Or he could think he is bullet proof.
Two problems here. We don't have a full list of who is more vulnerable than the general population. I've seen first hand accounts from people in their 30s who are otherwise healthy who have had heinous, non-hospitalised covid. We don't yet know if those people end up long or medium term disabled, nor if they are more vulnerable to a relapse or catching covid again. There are lots of people in NZ who are probably at risk but who are otherwise healthy eg people with asthma. Good luck telling them they have to self isolate indefinitely, let alone the rest of us.
The other problem is how does the state provide care to those people self isolating if there is no elimination of covid?
The details on these things are seriously lacking.
Meanwhile in Sweden
(Population of 10m – only about double NZ and yet 10x the cases and 177x the deaths!)
that is so gross.
It looks like there are some long term effects for those having survived a bad case of covid-19. And last time I looked, there seemed like there was some uncertainty about whether people could catch it again or not.
The were able to look at different American responses to the 1918 influenza epidemic. The states that went early and hard, recovered their health and economy sooner.
yes, few people are talking about disability rates post-covid infection.
This is worrying.
The scientists warn that the disease may infect the "nervous system and skeletal muscle as well as [the] respiratory tract" which could provide healthcare workers with an additional way to diagnose patients.
COVID-19 has "now reached pandemic status and is common all over the world" said the neurologists in their editorial.
"With so many affected patients, we can expect as neurologists to be confronted with these patients commonly in coming months and years."
https://news.sky.com/story/coronavirus-patients-have-suffered-strokes-and-other-neurological-symptoms-says-study-11972707?
Would any of the it's just a flu folk care to comment.
https://twitter.com/MEPFuller/status/1249708306643464192
http://archive.li/eo6MA
I read a report about immune system issues today too. I think I'm going to stop reading until we get solid reporting rather than speculative, but really to lower my stress levels. I feel like society is really lagging behind in this aspect, in part because it is so new, but also because we are just so shit at disability.
And yep, the shut vulnerable people away, it's just a flu, what about the economy crowd need to take a long hard look in the mirror.
My stress level goes up when I think about what Covid-19 can do to an autoimmune condition.
If Covid-19 has a nervous system and a muscular skeletal component to it and without doubt a respiratory component. It is going to be much harder to establish weather or not it is the autoimmune condition or a Covid-19 condition which is presenting.
I try to deal with each health condition separately to avoid being or becoming overwhelmed. Some conditions are temporary and can be treated and others are chronic which are managed the best way they can be.
The medical science to do with Covid-19 is huge as it will probably prove to be systemic. Anything systemic requires multiple specialists, example: limited scleroderma.
As a consequence of Covid-19, I would not exclude people requiring home health care support or residential care like in an aged care facility.
For the pedantic whether Para 2.
Similar Treetop. I'm just treating any change or new set or resurgence of symptoms as something that need to be attended to immediately in case it is cv.
And likewise on the exclusion thing. I think some of the people arguing that are clueless about just how many people may be affected, both pre-existing conditions, and previously healthy people ending up with chronic illness pos-covid. Others just don't give a shit.
Now we've even got a wunch of bankers saying that economically the smarter thing to do is extend the lockdown to ensure the COVID problem is dealt to, rather than open up early and take the risk of having to lock down again.
https://www.stuff.co.nz/business/120997347/tooshort-failed-lockdown-would-be-worse-outcome-for-economy-in-long-run-bank-warns
Excellent step by step look at Thornley‘s arguments at Newsroom. Totally rebutted imho. Great balanced journalism that shreds Thornley.
A very important heads up though on what the attack lines will be on the PM. Easy to find lots of ammunition for those with the motivation (Nats, business etc) to look unfortunately. Thankfully they will be up against Ardern.
Thornley article
The 2 nursed who Johnson praised are both migrant nurses, the NHS saved his life, I would hope the tories stop with the bashing of this service, though they're certainly making a mess of supplying the PPE (like everywhere?). The fact so many Drs, nurses, porters and even London bus drivers are dying from this "flu" you would think would shut the deniers up. We're going into winter now, flu season.
https://www.theguardian.com/society/2020/apr/13/despite-pms-praise-of-nurses-its-tory-policies-that-made-them-suffer oops, forgot link
I laughed listening to Boris say that he couldn't find the words to thank them.
I think he should give 350 million pounds a week to the NHS as thanks instead.
In the USA yesterday
new cases yesterday +27,421
total deaths 22,105
new death Yesterday+1,528
Doesn't appear to be flattening.
Those infection and mortality numbers are slightly lower than we have been seeing so maybe it is? Going to take longer to really tell.
Easter is likely to be having an effect on detection and reporting in western countries.
Possibly as far as infection reporting goes but holiday or not people are still dying and will be counted.
Anyway the US is in for a long slog. Even if containment measures are starting to work in places like California and New York the situation in other parts of the country is still developing. We haven’t seen the peak in great swathes of the country yet.
Yes they have been bouncing around fro the las week or so.
From graphs I have (but cannot post) – the USA looks to be flat-lining at their peak of daily new cases (around 100 new cases per million population) and still trending up for per capita deaths. Trends in deaths tend to lag trends in new cases by 7 days in big populations.
It is unlikely to. It is a big country. Like NZ regions, where the disease takes a foothold is uneven.
New York city has been the hardest hit, and the rate of confirmed cases and known deaths has a steadily reducing rate of increase – see % increases here.
Same in its earliest outbreak area in Washington State.
However there are other outbreak areas that are still increasing. For instance Louisiana, went from low to rapidly up but is now slowing once they started to take effective measures.
Not to mention Florida where the governor Ron DeSantis drank the draught of the Trumpian kool-aid more deeply than most and encoraged spring break – exporting covid-19 throughout the USA with moronic teenagers. A candidate for a mass murder charges and a death row sentence if I ever saw one.
I’d expect that over all, the US is going to stay high for some time just simply because most of its broken political system and especially the science shy moronic Republicans who prefer to believe bulklshit rather than reality. The southern states still haven’t hit peaks yet, and look to have some serious issues with killing their younger populations because of a long term underlying health crisis.
New York city has been the hardest hit,
NYC has a population of 8.6m, but has aprox 60m tourist visitors a year. Instead of just one 'patient zero' in the city, they probably had many thousands all at once.
They had many thousands in one day – Americans returning from overseas cooped up in Airports for around 8 hours with no space to social distance waiting to be processed though border control and customs.
https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2020/3/15/21180336/coronavirus-airports-screening-crowds-europe
trump is like… we've done the most tests of any country.
Fact check… USA testing per capita is behind Spain, Italy, South Korea etc.
Sadly I feel the USA still has a long way to go.
They are currently setting up for Agent Orange's presser, he hasn't done one for a couple of days. Let's see how brave the press is today with their questions.
Yes Cinny, the US are 20th in number of tests per million.
NOTE 20th!!!!!
Dang!! 20th, crikey, that's even further down the list than I thought.
I'm watching trumps presser and poor Fauci is having to defend his comment yesterday regarding whether they should have gone into lock down earlier.
This is the site i am getting the data from.
https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/
Thanks a bunch for the link DV, much appreciated. 🙂 Bookmarked 🙂
It's worse – they are actually at 42nd, based on the same link.
Thanks Paddy
Jeez how did I get that so wrong. I did a rough count BUT!!!
All good. I've been watching the Australian numbers – they are certainly moving in the right direction. Ours – I'm getting concerned about. On Saturday our deaths per 1M pop was 107th highest of 210 nations. Today, we're 86th. Australia were 79th, today they are 87th. So their numbers are improving, ours are worsening. Bad day today, sadly.
Oh, they were pretty brave, they managed to get the President of the USA to tear up the constitution, live on TV. That's a scoop.
It would be laugh out loud funny – if it weren't so tragic for millions.
If you wanted to a clear example of how capitalists see you and your families lives:
https://twitter.com/garethmorgannz/status/1249587266567024641
I'm sure that pharmac don't use $10,000 as the economic value of a life in their modelling. I'm guessing that the number they use is $10,000,000 and it has been misread or misunderstood somewhere along the way.
Pharmac appear to go about it a bit differently than just assigning a dollar value to a life saved.
Their approach for comparing the value of different treatments is by comparing how many quality-adjusted life years they buy for a given expenditure.
Pharmac economic-assessment-guide
[embed replaced with a link because those PDF embeds can't easily be read on a laptop or small device - weka]
Thanks weka. Next time I see that happening I'll try to change it. Deleting the original comment and redoing it using the link tool to embed the link in some text should do it?
PHARMAC use the QALY …
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quality-adjusted_life_year
… as do most health economic assessing agencies globally.
I hope that's true, because then we could reason that the half-life potential value inherent in a person could be ascertained, and that we could pay a single lump sum one-off tax payment to cover our entire lives. Then we could all go about our lives as we please. The figure would be quite low of course, and a complete fallacy. Which is what that number was anyway. But I like the beautiful simplicity in the way capitalists think: smart enough to know what numbers are, dumb enough to say them out loud, totally unaware of the consequences. A return to brutal tribalism would see many of the limp sadists running our country soon killed off by cheezel-munching thick-as-pig-shit thugs. An end to capitalism at last. Not an ideally pleasant way, but considering the endless brutal crimes carried out in their name, an end none the less.
So is Morgan saying that if he was paid $10,000, he would voluntarily euthanize himself and allow the buyer to sell his organs?
Or is his life somehow more valuable than everyone else's?
I'm sure he means he wouldn't dream of allowing a dhs to spend more than 10k keeping his sorry arse alive.
Watching Al Jazerra last night and a report on covid 19 lockdown in France as the death toll hits 15,000…Fance's lockdown appears to be the equivalent of our level 3 and in shot during the report was a Paris street with hundreds of shoppers, no social distancing and little PPE….anyone think we will behave any differently?
Some Kiwis treat level 4 as level 3 (or lower) as it is. I even had family visitors bringing my kids Easter eggs on the weekend. They said that there was a newspaper piece with the PM saying that the Easter bunny and tooth fairy were essential services. Which; yes, is accurate, but a truly spectacular missing of the point!
Perhaps we need the government to invent another even more restrictive level 5 category to ensure that we observe minimum level 4 protocols? That would be horrible for people who realise that rules are not just for other people though.
think that level is called Martial Law
well it is easy then is it not.
Keep yourself home to level 5 or 10 if you think it is needed, and be done with it.
Do you realise that this lockdown for the families of the expendable essential workers have no safety in lockdown? Or does that just by completely – or can we finally dispense with the pretend of caring for workers?
My partner is one of the expendables. He leaves does his job and brings what ever he encounters back. The government provides no sanitizer to the families, no gloves, no masks. We provide that, when we can find it, from our socialist government survival allocation of funds.
So frankly, this is bullshit as the government is quite happy to pretend that nothing could be done to save the expendable workers and their whanau should the men and women keeping this country running atm come home with any transmittable disease.
So why not wrap yourself in a bail of cotton, add a few layers of bubble wrap and a full body condom to assure your safety.
Because some of us in lockdown were never safe we were just locked up like prisoners in our little private cages.
Sabine
You obviously feel strongly about this, but maybe you could take a couple of minutes to proofread before you push publish? I may be getting your points wrong, but you can't expect people to read words that aren't there…
I know a nurse who has to not be within two metres of their spouse (vulnerable group). So they don't get to see each other except through windows for the duration. At that, they're lucky that their place is big enough to manage that trick. A shelf-stacker in a cheap flat or apartment has got to be having a harder time of it. Especially if families are cohabiting and there is no other option.
But SARS-COV-2 doesn't have a heart to care. It's going to do what it does, and we have to respond to that. It would have been better to have Pandemic preparation drills before the Crow swooped down upon us, but you can only change the present (with an eye to the future).
It's not all about me. Fewer people dying is better – even if that's John Key, Roger Douglas, or some other villain. Could the government be doing better in some areas – sure. But it's a juggling act.
BTW I have been in prison. Your cage comparison can only be made from ignorance. The difference is readily apparent to me.
Yes i agree people are losing it being at home for few weeks try a few years in a real cage with crazys all about, listening to people being cut up or sprayed with blood from the knife fight you cant remove your self from. As was said do this standing on my head,
This is prison (though we didn't wear orange in my day)!
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=9w-kG4mMPj8
I did see on AJ TV last night that France intercepted masks and gloves which were intended for Italy and Spain.
The EU has not worked when it comes to having PPE stocks for a pandemic. EU are also arguing about how a loan to the poorer EU countries will be paid back.
EU are becoming irrelevant.
Yes…the EU is struggling big time…the crisis has shown the same divisions that the GFC did, perhaps more so…a decade on and the cause of the problems havnt been addressed…same the world over
Italy is not even back to pre GFC economy. Austerity has not been the answer.
Business is not my thing, but I can see greed.
NZME laying off 200 staff.
https://www.stuff.co.nz/business/120995004/media-company-nzme-will-cut-its-workforce-by-15
Rightly or wrongly, I got the feeling on reading those comments from the group advocating a “return to normal” that they are wanting to be “in the picture” for some attention and headlines. None of them appear to be part of the regular advisers and experts we have become familiar with.
Amazing that the Dom Post reporter got away with calling the Bolsonaro gang ‘health experts’. Most of them seem to work in the field of economics.
One of this group is an associate professor of law, another is a professor of experimental economics. The mind boggles.
An important aspect of Dr Bloomfield’s role is to present the facts in a calm and considered way. There has been no panic (apart from supermarket shoppers). People have largely been great at accepting what we have to do. No health system anywhere will be perfect. There will never be funding for 100% of everything. Having a close contact in the MOH, I know they are working very very long hours and have done for weeks.
Would love the daily press conferences to have some better questions.
On the top of my list would be:
Is Data ventures the commercial arm of the Stats department required to fulfill OIA's and if not why not – they have definitely been wallowing around in all our private data. And how much is the head of it paid. Not from what I have seen a crowd to trust.
The so called phone tracing Apps. In communities where phone usage is shared, non existent or non data enabled (like me I turn it off) and who are frequently poorer how is this supposed to work? or do they just get infected. Not everyone has a $600 phone.
Interesting. Governors along the west coast and in the northeast are getting together to coordinate responses and resources. That is what the federal government should be doing, but they've evidently concluded the Quid Pro Quoronavirus isn't going to ever do his job and he'll be forever just ineffectually fiddling around in his covfiefdom of the Oval Office.
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/democratic-governors-form-compacts-coordinate-reopening-coronavirus_n_5e94d0e0c5b63e2705ca8054
well they have too.
cause they are in deep shit. But no one could have forseen this, no siree.
https://twitter.com/cspan/status/1249837741711544321
Bernie Sanders endorses Joe Biden for president
"Today I am asking all Americans – I'm asking every Democrat, I'm asking every independent, I'm asking a lot of Republicans – to come together in this campaign to support your candidacy which I endorse,"
Lotsa fuck you, Bernie, in the replies.
https://twitter.com/BernieSanders/status/1249760437853401097
I guess those democratic socialists are happy to have Trump for another 4 years. 🙄
If they don't eat each other.
https://twitter.com/T_FisherKing/status/1249765597367406597
Could all the virtue signallers with their latex one-use gloves please dispose of them properly instead of flopping them on the ground in the supermarket carparks?
Ya reckon?
Because those 'heroes of the frontline', the underpaid and overworked, have to pick those dangerous and nasty items up. And dispose of them safely.
If you can't do the decent thing – stay home and starve. You'll never be missed.
Ew! I haven't seen that myself, only getting down to the shops once a week. But so much Ew!
"…virtue signallers…"
Hmm…please don't disparage folk for taking precautions.
Quite right to take on the litterbugs however, whatever the litter.
But take some comfort in the fact, or near so, that the nasty greeblies will be on the outside of those gloves , the side that almost invariably ends up on the inside when the gloves are removed😉.
Yes. I missed that "virtue signalling" line myself in the wave of revulsion that rolled over me. "Vice demonstrating" would be a better term there.
I have seen the phrase used elsewhere as a kind of dogwhistle akin to "PC" or "snowflake". Is the definition; the act of insincerely performing a socially approved action? I can see how that almost fits the situation. Though wouldn't a true virtue signaller then ostentatiously place the gloves in a bin – or several more layers of plastic.
Hard to know others' motivations, unless they proclaim them out loud. And even then they have to both know the truth and represent it accurately. However, it's also hard for humans not to see and believe patterns in their surroundings.
Yes I have noticed that latex gloves is the new broken glass (stubbie bottles) but can cause more damage.
Disposing of PPE waste needs an education programme.
Remember that Wisconsin election the Dem governor tried to delay and the Repugs at all levels up to the US Supreme Court forced to go ahead?
The real significance of that election wasn't the primary between Biden and Sanders, it's also the general election for a bunch of local government positions, including one seat on the Wisconsin Supreme Court.
It appears the incumbent conservative has lost, and that seat has flipped to the liberal challenger. From vote numbers for the Dem and Repug presidential primaries, it appears that Repugs just didn't turn out to vote. Kind of a predictable effect if there's disease going around and the question at the top of your voting paper is moot to begin with.
https://www.politico.com/news/2020/04/13/wisconsin-coronavirus-election-results-lawsuits-184666
Bernie Sanders has now made it clear that he fully endorses Joe Biden and that all his supporters should too.
https://www.politico.com/news/2020/04/13/sanders-endorses-biden-183961
“Today, I am asking all Americans — I'm asking every Democrat; I’m asking every independent; I’m asking a lot of Republicans — to come together in this campaign to support your candidacy, which I endorse, to make certain that we defeat somebody who I believe is the most dangerous president in the modern history of this country,” Sanders told Biden.
“I will do all that I can to see that that happens, Joe,” Sanders pledged, after calling Trump a racist, a sexist, a xenophobe and a religious bigot who botched the nation’s initial response to the coronavirus pandemic.
“I want to thank you for that. It’s a big deal,” Biden said. “Your endorsement means a great deal, a great deal to me.”
Sanders and Biden pledged to form six task forces to advise the Biden campaign on policy to bridge divides with progressive voters and, especially, young people who voted for Sanders and against Biden in droves.
That is a most statesmanlike statement from Sanders there.
Biden – the architect of a crime bill that threw away the key on (soon to be) jailed black people. He is the guy leveling charges of racism?
Biden – Tara Reade. And he wants to get on his high horse about Trump being sexist?
Maybe he should have thrown in something about corruption too? 🙂
Perfect is the enemy of barely adequate. Fuggeddaboudit Jake, it's Yanktown.
I hope Biden gives Sanders a decent job on his administration.
Political phenom endorsing the political living dead.
These are very strange times indeed.
The deeper into the mire Trump finds himself (entirely of his own making), the more villainous his manner and despotic his actions and threats become:
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-52274969?intlink_from_url=https://www.bbc.com/news/world/us_and_canada&link_location=live-reporting-story
The racist fuckwit Paul Henry has a new tv show starting on 3.
New current affairs programme
Expect four nights per week of anti government propaganda leading up to the election.
Wonder who will host the election debates on both major channels? 🙄
Assuming he lasts that long. But yeah, way to go TV3, biggest crisis of our lives and you want to give him a voice?
It will legitimise the voice of the business as usual crowd, as paid for by businesses, as usual.
They are either tone deaf or so desperate they are being forced into high risk decisions.
Who there though Hannah Tamaki would be a good idea for Dancing with the Stars is anyone's guess, but I heard that the loss of key upper management in the last few months left some inexperience at in that space.
It is showing.
Tone deaf, desperate, don't give a shit, inexperience. It all adds up to a cultural and ethical issue.
Please, please do not allow Hosking to host the election debates.
Well they do have Campbell now, so maybe as he's on air and hoskin's isn't, hopefully not.
Campbell would be good. I like the more serious political reporters, not the flakey/ lacking substance ones.
Fucksake: pandemic, radioactive forest fires, now that walking pustule is back on telly? As soon as his ratings drop he'll be back to his old edge-lording ways.
First real sign the covid virus has become a zombie apocalypse.
9:30pm – too bad, that is the time I spend rubbing sand in my eyes and pushing pins under my fingernails – otherwise I'd be watching, promise.
Yep, sounds much less painful.
Henry will just be a load of egocentric ill-informed 'reckons', topped off with a healthy serving of greed and self-interest.
A dykshyt to make lockdown less bearable. Goody.
It's Henry so they won't use a 'Producer'. Since it's Paul Henry they'll have instead a Proctologist.
Could be the height of optimism that '3' as we know it will still exist come election time.
I will not miss it when it goes.
Edit: snap weka
Well the things you find out in a shitfight. Burger King NZ is owned by Blackstone US. Was is probably the correct tense now because they ripped so much money out of it in NZ it couldn't survive a 2 week holiday.
Vampire
capitalistsextortionists.edit: Blackstone gets a mention
In 2017, Cerberus Capital Management, a private equity firm, acquired Easton Hospital, a facility located in Pennsylvania’s Lehigh Valley, north of Philadelphia. Shortly after acquiring the hospital, Cerberus, through its Steward Health Care subsidiary, sold the property (but not the hospital itself) to a real estate investment firm, Medical Properties Trust.
Easton Hospital’s property was packaged with seven other hospitals, which netted Cerberus $304 million. But now Easton Hospital had to pay rent to operate on the land it had owned for the last 127 years.
Although the precise details are not public, it’s also likely that Cerberus saddled Easton Hospital with much of the debt it used to acquire the hospital. Typically, a private equity buyout “includes debt financing in the range of 50 percent to 70 percent of the purchase price, which the acquisition, in this case Easton Hospital, is expected to repay.
So, for the last few years, Easton Hospital was forced to divert a significant portion of its revenue to paying rent and the debt imposed on it by Cerberus. Not surprisingly, it’s financial condition worsened.
On March 22, as the pandemic shut down much of the nation and put a premium on hospital capacity, Cerberus sent a letter to Pennsylvania Governor Tom Wolf demanding the state assume “all operating expenses and liabilities of Easton Hospital” or the company would “proceed immediately on planning to close the facility.”
The gambit worked. On March 27, the state announced it would provide Easton Hospital with an infusion of $8 million to keep the hospital open until at least June 30, 2020. But Cerberus said it was promised more money, and threatened to close the facility at midnight. At the time, five people had already died of COVID-19 in that area of the state. To avoid shuttering the hospital, Pennsylvania relented, and agreed to pay Cerberus $8 million in exchange for a promise to keep the “facility open and operating for at least the next four weeks.” To keep the hospital operating through June, the state will have to pay Cerberus $24 million.
https://popular.info/p/how-private-equity-is-using-the-pandemic
this, ad infinitum….the perversion of the financial system…to the benefit of whom?
For those clamouring to get back to BAU.
Japan's Hokkaido prefecture, which accounted for the country's highest number of coronavirus infections as the pandemic initially swept through Asia, has seen a sudden uptick in cases, causing government officials there to declare a state of emergency less than a month after lifting a similar order.
[..]
Hokkaido declared a three-week state of emergency in February that was lifted on March 19. The prefecture had begun to reopen schools and was even allowing carefully orchestrated public gatherings.
But the latest order reverses all that, asking residents once again to refrain from nonessential trips outside their homes and closing prefectural primary and secondary schools until May 6.
https://www.npr.org/sections/coronavirus-live-updates/2020/04/13/832981899/emergency-declared-in-japanese-prefecture-hit-by-2nd-wave-of-coronavirus-infecti
You are right Joe. A very significant reversal. Our Government has a tremendously difficult decision to make. Will be damned whichever way we go.
It surely is a damned if you do, damned if you don't scenario, though for purely selfish reasons, I wouldn't say no to a couple of extra weeks in lock down, but then I am immune compromised, so I won't be back at work until level 1 is declared anyway.
Not a great look:
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/labour-leak-report-corbyn-election-whatsapp-antisemitism-tories-yougov-poll-a9462456.html
And yet it took former labour voters from the red wall to make it happen effectively.
Smeg! Just in case you missed it, there's a new movie length Red Dwarf out.
In the recommendations.
I should have scrolled down and led with that 🙄
Still, well worth searching out a stream for. Even the laughter track couldn't kill it.
I was intrigued by a statement that came from China some time ago along the lines that the government there had told banks not to expect to make a profit this year. Seems quite reasonable in some respects, and something that to an extent could be expected here given the governments underlying support for the baking system. With those thoughts I think any bank that achieves much the same profit this year as it did last year should be regarded as a leech on New Zealanders, and we should take not of their greed in considering who we should do business with.
With that in view, I expect most banks will change the classification on most loans to require much heavier reserves against default, to provision for all sorts of future "committed" spending, and do their utmost to get profit down, so a big profit will be evidence of incompetence at the skill of ripping us off while appearing to be there to help us.
How will Kiwibank fare? At least their profits stay in New Zealand, but is that good enough?
Lest we forget.
https://twitter.com/PL1918ENG/status/1249705436925906944
"The last six weeks have seen a bout of intervention without precedent. The results have been momentous. A giant public safety net has been stretched out across the financial system. We may never know what went on behind the closed doors of the US Federal Reserve, the European Central Bank and the Bank of England during those critical moments in March. So far, only muffled sounds of argument have reached the outside. But as the virus struck, the men and women in those three central banks held the economic survival of hundreds of millions of people and the fate of nations in their hands. This is the story of how global financial meltdown was averted by central banks taking decisions that, just a month earlier, they would have dismissed as utterly impossible."
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2020/apr/14/how-coronavirus-almost-brought-down-the-global-financial-system
deja vu
Tree planting still going on. Mar.30/20 https://www.goodnewsnetwork.org/ex-coal-man-rallies-appalachians-to-plant-187-million-trees-on-abandoned-mines/