There are quite a few regular commentators on here who, frankly, are beginning to piss me off.
I excuse the usual right wing idiots – like the Natz, they’ll criticise because, you know, Labour – enough said. I could name them, but you know who I’m referring to.
No, it’s the so-called lefties who are getting my goat.
NZ has probably had the best covid response in the world – the facts speak for themselves – 188th in the world in terms of cases, only just over 1000 cases during the whole pandemic per 1 million and only five deaths (per million).
There has been no playbook for this crisis – the government is literally making it up as they go along – yet these Captain Hindsights all preach about what should have been done 18 months ago.
Or they rabbit on about their rights being curtailed, as if they had no responsibilities. As if individual rights pre-empted collective responsibilities.
Then they go on about how the Labour government is not doing enough (which I can agree with for I too have been generally disappointed by the lack of radical progress in many areas) but then suggest they’ll give their vote to the Natz? Or worse still, Act??
A moment’s reflection should convince them that, on the evidence of right-wing governments world wide, covid would have been a fucking disaster under a Natz government.
But do they reflect? No, they bag the government. Well, they have a ‘right’ to do so, but reading their comments is getting a little tedious. And if someone does call them out, as happened yesterday, they get dumped on with abusive language.
I, for one, wouldn’t want to be anywhere else in the world at the moment.
Nor would I. I agree re the likelihood that things would be significantly worse if we had a National govt.
The thing that irritates me is Labour's tolerance of obfuscation. Either the public health officials know how Delta is being spread, or they don't. If they know, they ought to tell us. If they don't they ought to say so.
Instead we just get the number of unlinked cases dangled in front of us daily as if it were some kind of totem to be gazed at with fascination. Seems more like a bullshit scheme to me – and I have generally approved their performance.
Yeah, probably, but it doesn't change my view as expressed. I see no valid excuse for their failure to inform the public of the contagion pattern that they have discerned. If we were all the wiser after being thus informed, we'd be on board with the policy implementation strategy. We wouldn't have this growing loss of trust in their strategy.
Honestly, I think people's nervousness is due to Labour and MoH not being god. This is a really hard situation, they've not had a break in 18 months. People are understandably stressed, it's a really stressful situation. Who would you rather was running the response other than Labour?
I don't have a problem with Hipkins. He seems to be on the ball. I think the PM ought to be somewhat more so: she ought to explain the nature of the contgagion pattern. Causal thinking is hard-wired into us from our evolutionary past. I appreciate that pandemics are inherently mystifying, but getting a grip on how they work is always in our common interests.
As I mentioned below, could be that political correctness is defeating our common interest by getting in the way of the truth…
You have admitted that you havn't been listening to the briefings, just the media interpretations,.
The information has often been in the briefings and Government statements.
Whereas I wonder if most of the media has even been there. Certainly not listening. They mis-interprete and even lie about what was said so often.
As for question time, after the briefings, I just turn it off. The partisan ignorance, and lack of basic comprehension, of the so called "Journalists" is both depressing and irritating. .
Over the last couple of weeks we have been told (Govt sources or answers at the ‘pressers’
a) families of over 10 people in each family are getting together
b ) families/groups are getting together inside instead of being outside
c) we are given locations of interest that seem to be suburbs in South Auckland & now west Auckland
I suspect some churches are 'hiding' by having bible study or services inside family homes and with larger groupings, but being less obvious than seeing a pile of people or cars outside a church. Last outbreak we had a couple of instances like this come to light.
For me the contagion pattern is in South Auckland, mainly, spread by groups or families of over 10 people who are largely meeting inside.
Looking at the demographics from MOH you can see the ages are mostly 0-59 years. Children are highly represented
0-9 350
9-19 401
Maori 599 and Pasifika 989 people are over represented. Hospitlaisation is 43 cases for Maori and 107 for Pasifika.
Vaccination status when reported as a case is also on that site total 2005.
1132 not vaccinated 138 hospitalised
409 less than 12 years old and therefore not vaccinated 7 hospitalised
Judging by the difficulty of tracking some contacts, as my dad would say, I would 'hazard a guess' that some are involved in criminal or antisocial enterprises
That's an extremely comprehensive picture you've painted there. I suspect journos are too paranoid to report the ethnic problem: pc inhibiting their desire to report the truth. Delta getting the kids to that extent shows how different it is to the original contagion last year which had minimal effect on kids as far as I could tell. Thanks for the effort, which I reckon will clarify the view of plenty of others, not just me.
Unlinked cases are interesting because they suggest there are unknown cases out there. And unknown cases are the danger because they can spread unknowlingly (or knowingly but uncaringly).
But unlinked cases can turn into linked cases once all the places where that person has gone is worked through or they can link through studying the virus genome.
As someone that used to be in logistics I can easily say that this should not be a difficult question to answer
The main reason we have low numbers is mainly down to luck ie location, surrounded by water, low population so it seems reasonable to question the government given they've had over a year to sort things out
The main reason we have low numbers is that Labour went hard early on in the pandemic and eliminated covid from the community until fairly recently. Geography didn't make that happen, and as delta is showing us, Auckland is a population dense city not a low population once.
We could in fact say we've had two pandemics in NZ, covid, followed closely by delta. Our strategy for the first was very successful. Our strategy for the second is still being worked out because it is new.
l. It is not necessary to close borders while Level 4-3 lock downs are going on (or when the local population is vaxxed up and its the vaccinated coming in).
2. Level 1 was sweet and it was unknown whether the vaccine would prevent transmission (it does not) – if it did a lot more ICU would not be needed.
3. Delay has allowed us to know the vaccination will not end the pandemic and to appreciate that its important to have the AZ antibody cocktail and Merck anti-viral available in our hospitals to support the protection provided by this Pfizer vaccine roll out.
4. We have ICU beds and trained and experienced ICU staff and supplementary beds with trained up surgical nurses (I would prefer we imported some pandemic experienced staff from OE into airbnb and maintained surgeries myself).
You do not need to close borders while lock downs are going on.
Yes you do.
2. Level 1 was sweet and it was unknown whether the vaccine would prevent transmission (it does not) – if it did a lot more ICU would not be needed.
You do not delay when a vaccine is available. It is better to have it and not need it then need it and not have it.
3. Delay has allowed us to know the vaccination will not end the pandemic and to appreciate that its important to have the AZ antibody cocktail and Merck anti-viral available in our hospitals before the protection provided by this Pfizer vaccine roll out fades.
You do not delay when a vaccine is available. It is better to have it and not need it then need it and not have it.
4.We have ICU beds and trained and experienced ICU staff we have supplementary beds with trained up surgical nurses
We don't have enough if the s**t hits the fan. The government has had over a year and should have been prioritising this (no thats not hindsight, thats obvious)
We don't have enough if the s**t hits the fan. The government has had over a year and should have been prioritising this (no thats not hindsight, thats obvious)
Waiting and watching was wise, the AZ antibody roll out to the unvaxxed and the Merck anti-viral treatment will reduce need for ICU care.
Prisoner of the Right you have Obsessive Conservative Disorder
PCR tests are far more accurate than the Quick Saliva tests.
Delta can easily missed even after 3 quick tests didn't show any infection a PCR test showed that person had asymptomatic covid.in a recent news article.
Your like a kid who doesn't get his own way having a tantrum today.
I wonder how you would treat one of your charges at work who was displaying this behaviour.
They did order vaccines while we had Level 1 elimination.
Sure they expected to complete vaccination first and then open up (and bring in rapid testing for this then), so yes they were caught out by not being able to realise elimination with the latest outbreak …
– why didn't they get in early and order vaccines before they were out of trials
they did
– why did they order untested vaccines, knowing some might fail trials
or:
– why didn't they order saliva tests of undetermined or insufficient reliability
they did
-why did they waste money on substandard tests
PR isn't even the worst one. There are a few tories who would have been charged with treason if they'd exhibited similar behaviour in WW2, providing aid and comfort to the enemy.
These days, they don't even breach broadcasting standards because that minute of ranting was "opinion" not "news content".
It was the travel bubble remember that gave us the joy of the Delta virus. And in that, despite having all the info we waited 3 weeks for the border to shut. This is like peeing in an swimming pool.
We had over a year to get everybody vaccinated and prepared to open the boarders. Pfizer offered but no, we are special, so special.
If my memory doesn't fail me, the first deliveries of vaccines were reserved for the elderly and Maori/Pacifica. This was months ago and I hear constantly the government failed them. Absolutely not.
The actual outbreak in August came via a person who came into managed isolation from Sydney after the travel bubble closed.
There will be more than one case of spread after we open up borders with vaccination at c90%. The spread rate now would be higher and nationwide if we had vaccinated earlier.
"Why does no one seem to know how many ICU beds and staff we have?"
General incompetence and the wrong people being put in charge but really it was just another reason as to my arguement why its more luck than good management
Funny, because one of neoliberalism's first moves was to replace clinical managers with non-clinical managers from other sectors. Maybe it's not just a logistical provisioning thing, and having long years of experience working as a clinical manager would have given an advantage in knowing how to keep the system adaptable.
Then there is the health system undermined by neoliberalism, understaffing, and budget cuts. For decades.
Next you'll be telling me that the market will provide enough ICU nurses.
lol, the problems with the health system are on both National and Labour and predate this particular government by a long way. Those problems didn't arise out of thin air. If you replace clinical managers with managers whose purpose is to run a hospital like a business, then this is exactly the kind of stupid outcome you get.
I would guess because wards can become ICU wards or not depending on demand. And more beds can be put into an ICU ward if absolutely needed. Staffing is always a revolving target as people come and go, change departments, etc etc.
Geography was always the most important factor. We might like to imagine a scenario where the UK was so well managed that they could have implemented MIQ like NZ. Heres why that doesn't work…
First of all the UK needs to implement a successful elimination, by early lockdowns. This could never have happened but lets imagine it did. The UK population is 10x NZ population and much more integrated with Europe and Ireland in terms of trade routes. So we infer that the UKs MIQ needs to handle (very conservatively) only 10x as many people as NZ. NZ had a covid case escape MIQ roughly every 4 months. This lead to regional lockdowns for weeks or months. So in the UK the equivalent is some part of the UK will be locked down due to a MIQ escape almost continuously (or somehow UK MIQ works more than 10x better than NZ MIQ).
The regional lockdowns will hardly be eliminated in weeks as the population density is much higher. In fact the UK has been locked down for significant lengths of time but never has got close to eliminating the alpha variant regionally afaik, let alone nationally.
Finally elimination may have been possible around when there were hundreds of cases in the UK. From estimates this was around January 2020, before there was even widespread knowledge of the virus.
This is not to say the UK reaction was particularly good, there were more than a few mistakes made, but its mostly geography driving how the pandemic would work out.
Looks to me like each place needed its own solutions and systems. However, the values that we start with dictated how pandemic responses were developed in addition to the geography. Geography didn't make Labour go hard early, their health advisors and Labour's (and I'm sure Ardern's) values did.
Likewise, if we'd had FJK in charge (or Collins 🙄🤡), I think it's likely we would have gone down a similar path as the UK and the US, because of values.
PR is trying to argue that Labour didn't do anything good and just got lucky. While we have had luck as well, PR's position is plainly partisan nonsense.
Its certainly plausible that National in govt would have handled it much worse. Australia did similarly however with a conservative government so I wouldn't assume thats a certainty (again being somewhat remote geographically helped). But I have had conversations where people overseas suggested that NZs success was mostly about the political aspects and thats not intellectually justifiable. If NZ was in the middle of Europe we would have had a large outbreak even with the same policies in place and wouldn't have got to elimination.
Politics, hubris, incompetence and a bit of financial skullduggery are better explanations than geography.
You're right though, a comparison with New Zealand isn't fair. The UK's response needs to be compared with other small, densly population nations with regional roles in highly populated nearby areas. Measuring the UK's response against East Asian nations, which are far more geographically similar is a better way to judge what could be.
at a guess, part of the issue with the ICU figures is whether one is counting infrastructure or staffing. My understanding is that it's trained nurses on the payroll that determine what a 'bed' is, not the bed itself.
I see this is pretty much what Watkins is saying. Also,
The Society points out that the numbers can fluctuate widely depending on staffing, while some district health boards conflate staffed ICU, high dependency, and coronary care beds.
To me it just looks like the normal outcome of neoliberalisation of the health system over the past 40 years. What did we expect?
This is a matter of simple logisitics. For example you take all the factors that make up a complete ICU ready bed and then go to the hospitals and get the information from them
Its really not that difficult
EG 200 beds and 150 nurses = 150 ICU ready beds (or however you want to call them) however Labour just can't seem to help themselves when it comes to spinning so they'd say 200 beds which is factually correct but obviously wrong
But then lets face it you had Clark as minister of health, which worked out really well, and now you have a union lawyer so is it really a surprise no one knows whats going on?
Each ICU bed requires 3 specially trained nurses, round the clock and dedicated to that ICU bed. So 200 beds = 600 nurses if none of them take leave or are sick.
Assuming the nurses are going to have 2 days off per week, along with public holidays (either on the days or as alternative holidays later), annual leave and sick leave (and bereavement, parental and other leave), not to mention professional development/training and any similar reasons for time off, a more likely number of nurses is 6 per bed, so 200 beds = 1200 nurses who require 4 years of training after they graduate as nurses.
Also, hospitals with ICUs are usually close to capacity as part of the staffing and funding model, so additional capacity comes at the cost of capacity somewhere else, or a few years to physically build more capacity at a time when building labour and material supply are quite constrained.
Exactly. Then you have the ongoing process of not knowing how many nurses are on the cusp of getting qualified for that setting, and how many are set to look at the time to come and find other work. Then there are the beds: the maintenance schedules of every single machine around each bed, and whether one machine being actually used in another ward means that bed is no longer ICU-standard (but could be if needs be).
Across twenty different organisations which might each have a couple different sub-units (aka "hospitals") and management structures long-trained to gaming the system (e.g. fudging ED admissions in the 1990s-2000s), and it's a substantially more complex logistics issue than PR thinks.
A moment’s reflection should convince them that, on the evidence of right-wing governments world wide, covid would have been a fucking disaster under a Natz government.
Well said – a characteristic of many right-wing govts is their weak pretense of governing for society as a whole, while giving COVID a helping hand to take the hindmost.
No, it’s the so-called lefties who are getting my goat.
We may get on your goat, but in a functioning democracy I believe it is our duty to critique the government at every turn.
So many people treat politics like sport. We cheer on our side, and so long as we are beating the Nats, then everything is apparently awesome. There is a general obsession from some to almost have a daily post about National, which is just plain weird in my view. They are irrelevant.
You can be broadly in support of the government's response to COVID, while at the same time being critical of certain aspects of that response. That is healthy for good decsion making. Its not treason to criticise.
I wouldn't have wanted to be anywhere other than New Zealand over the past two years, and I'm very glad National wasn't in government. But that shouldn't discourage lefties from calling out the government when they deserve it.
Its kind of like when you're driving through terrible weather and you can hardly see 5 metres in front of you, but your driver carefully navigates through the stormy weather, while some of your neighbours are reckless and crash.
Then you come to a lull in the weather and the driver rightly congratualtes themself for getting eveyone to that point safely.
Meanwhile your reckless neighbours upgrade their cars with urgency to protect them in the storm as they are still stuck in the middle of it.
The passenger sees darker scarier storm clouds on the horizon and suggests to the driver that maybe we should also upgrade the car before the second storm gets here. The driver says, no urgency as I have got you through the storm and we don't need that upgrade like our neighbours.
Then, predictably, but without warning, the storm hits.
Upgrading the car mid journey is exactly what we are doing now.
It's a completely different set-up to what we were driving in April 2020. I know some people just want to go back and do what we did then as it worked. But the storm has evolved and so to does our car need to.
See you are proving my point. Crticism isn't anti-government.
We're taking different routes – miq vs "open border but isolate at home", L4 early instead of wishful thinking.
And this is a discussion. As opposed to what is possible with government – unless we have 5 million comms staff all responding to each others bullshit concerns.
And then some tories would just complain about too many comms staff.
And then there's your false equivalence between an (albeit asymmetric rather than face to face, where you know I receive your message as soon as you finish talking) comment:response format between a small number of people where both are ostensibly commenting in good faith, vs some fucking opinionator in an editorial spreading alarm and despondency, with no possibility of timely response to a similar audience because "comments on this article have now closed".
Don't compare a disagreement here with anything Juco says, for example.
I think we ended up going down quite a long rabbit hole McFlock, and I'm not quite sure why.
My initial comment was in response to Tony who took issues with lefties being critical. The old view that if don't support us on everything, you must be a Nat. Bat shit crazy thinking.
I took it as meaning not all criticism of the government's covid response is fair, constructive, accurate, useful, or particularly warranted given the state of the rest of the world.
In fact, most of it is "none of the above". It doesn't matter who is doing the backseat driving, if it's "none of the above" then they're doing nothing other than distracting the driver.
It's interesting hearing from so-called commentators about "rights" when in comes to covid restrictions and requirements. Yet it's difficult to see where these "rights" come from. The Human Rights Act lists 13 grounds of discrimination. I can't see which one or more of these could be relied upon to trump anything the government might do in the way of requirements around safety in respect to the potential spread of covid. Nor can the NZBORA provide anything similar. In any case it only applies to things done by the government or Crown-related outfits, and then only in relation to their statutory functions. It's telling that Russell McVeigh, one of the largest law firms in the country, has announced it's policy of requiring everyone visiting their offices to be vaccinated, including all staff. Surely if anyone's risk-analysis of such a requirement was going to stand up to a HRA or NZBORA critique it'd be theirs.
In terms of the NZBORA and Covid restrictions, it would be the rights to refuse medical treatment, freedom of movement, association and peaceful assembly. I think the restrictions come under justified limitations (also in the NZBORA) myself and that has been the findings of courts to date, but obviously others have a differing view.
Yes, I'm sure Russell McVeigh's position would be that the restrictions are justified limitations. I'm not so sure about the right to refuse medical treatment, though. I'd say the right is still intact because people can still refuse vaccination.
Currently, but if you're a nurse or teacher (for example), NZ work might be hard to find after the order comes through, which could be seen as compulsion. Agree that it's more tenuous than hired goons actually forcing the vaccination.
"but then suggest they’ll give their vote to the Natz? Or worse still, Act??"
And many of us lefties aren't Labour supporters either. although I do think they have done a very good job of managing the pandemic until they opened the Oz bubble. Since then they have been putting out fires.
As a traveller stuck in QLD I suggest the following with regard to travel back to the motherland:
I have been in Brisbane since July 8 and there are zero cases of COVID-19 in QLD. (I was unable to travel back in the five-day window)
I do not have COVID-19 nor have I ever had it.
I have not been in an area that has COVID-19
There is absolutely no risk to New Zealand if I was to travel as I have been double vaccinated with Astra Zeneca but not Pfizer.
There is way more chance of me contracting COVID if I return to Auckland anyway.
It has to be my choice if I want to travel NOT the NZ Government if I am virus free.
Many Aucklanders are not even following the quarantine measures in place so you have no chance of controlling the spread of the disease while you have so many anti-vaxers and disrupters. Sooner or later, just as NSW and Victoria and ACT have done you are going to have to accept it exists and manage the cases for those who won't vaccinate.
There is an even bigger chance of catching COVID if I have to quarantine in a hotel room that is :
Not fit for purpose
Does not have sealed ventilation or pressurised ventilation systems
Is not designed nor fit for purpose
Is not available to anyone until well into 2022 anyway
I am perfectly capable of self-quarantine at a suitable location if I have to.
What I would want to ask the Minister is how could a competent Minister let this disastrous state of affairs continue and the debacle that is MIQ, operate for so long with absolutely no leadership on this issue.
There is absolutely no risk to New Zealand if I was to travel as I have been double vaccinated with Astra Zeneca but not Pfizer.
Nope.
The Pfizer–BioNTech and Oxford–AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccines are effective against the highly infectious Delta variant of SARS-CoV-2 — but their protection drops away over time, a study of infections in the United Kingdom has concluded.
…
The vaccine developed by Oxford and the pharmaceutical company AstraZeneca in Cambridge, UK, was 69% effective against a high viral load 14 days after the second dose, falling to 61% by 90 days.
The vaccines are tools to help limit spread and reduce risk to individuals. They're not a panacea. The helping limit spread thing needs multiple tools, including controls on borders, periodic lockdowns, MiQ, mask wearing, hand washing, distancing etc.
Tony, I just ask the complainers exactly how many mates and matesses they were prepared to bury in the last 18 months. There is no comfortable reply.
And Dennis, maybe you haven’t been listening but it is emphasised every time Ardern et al has been asked, transmission has NOT been happening at work, shopping or out walking but at indoor mixing amongst family and friends groups. That’s what the contact tracers do.
Thanks Adrian – it's true that I don't watch those govt pr events, I just go by media reportage & commentary here.
So based on the above logic, Tamaki was right. Did the govt admit that?? And what exactly has the amendment of levels done to control that indoor mixing? The scenario you point to suggests to me that public health policy fails to solve the problem.
Irony. His apparent assumption that mass gatherings outside are okay. If delta isn't detectably spreading in them – which is what Adrian's reporting of Ardern's messaging suggests – then he was right in his assumption.
Tamaki wasn't ok. Small outside gatherings are less risky, not free of risk. That's why there are still rules for outside gatherings. Tamaki's mass event broke pretty much all of those rules.
If any cases get connected to an event he held, I hope he gets done for something in the order of negligence or some other reckless-endangering-causing-injury offense.
That was him thumbing his nose. His ant-vax sentiments are dangerous, Apostle #@*-$ believes his rubbish and spreads it. He is a parasite who may
through that kill the host.
"you choose to have sex without a condom you suffer the consequences"
That pretty much sums up your and other right wing wanky attitudes.
Most people delight in the consequences and we should be working to make that a good outcome for all people and all children so no-one would have to suffer.
Reminder in the 70's 40% of children were born out of wedlock and 40% within 9 months of getting married.
The right wing – trying to make reality in their own self-indulgent image since forever.
I don't believe you. Can you provide a source for this claim. I can offer you the following. In the middle of the 70s it gives the percentage of births out of wedlock as being about 16%. This rose to more like 50% in recent years.
Vaccinate or don't, isolate as much as possible or don't, mask up or don't
Thats how it should be.
How does that work for people who have illnesses that increase their risk of catching covid and increase the risk of very poor outcomes, and who will have to share spaces with the the people who don't vaccinate?
The outcomes for them don't sound conservative at all, in fact they sound pretty radical.
The flu is a seasonal illness. The Flu vaccine prevents the flu. The flu, even without the vaccine is less likely to be transmitted than covid, less likely to cause death and less likely to fill up our hospitals.
Covid is an all year illness. Rather than fully preventing the disease, the Covid vaccine more accurately reduces the spread of the disease and the impact of covid for people – not necessarily for those unfortunates "underlying conditions"
My mind is struggling to envisage how you think that would work withing the structure of a family – maybe sen the unfortunates off to some form of MIQ? It's still sounding pretty radical to me.
They think maybe Covid is seasonal, but they don't quite know how, def less seasonal in the tropics, maybe in countries with cold winters … Southland might be ok in the summertime ay?
Don't know if I am the only one but I am getting a bit sick of kung flu, China flu & the like. These and like names were Trumpian ways of either downplaying the effects of the virus or smearing countries. Now he is gone it is a blessed relief not to be hearing them again……until the last few days.
PR is there some reason why you are following this pattern of dismissing the virus by not calling it by its correct name.
A difference is that the flu is hard to vaccinate against while Delta isn't. Delta is approximately as bad as Polio on the numbers (similar R0, slightly faster serial interval, similar-higher death rate), and is quite a bit worse than the flu.
The flu is not hard to vaccinate against. Thousands get a vaccine each year that is tweaked for NZ by assessing the dominant strains in the Northern hemisphere.
Many people have had a longer exposure and thus immunities to the flu strains. Vaccines are advised for those who would be at risk if they develop influenza. It is not a matter of hard to develop but of need to have.
Hard to vaccinate against in the sense that flu is caused by collection of viruses which mutate a lot and sometimes the vaccines miss a circulating strain, and effectiveness against hospitalisation is not nearly as high as for Delta (Min Health website has it at 61% for adults 18-64 and similar numbers for other groups reported).
Dictionaries are ever so 19th century. Just explain that the net is wide enough to include businesses, he'll get it. He likely knows right-wing doctrine says that govt bail-outs are anathema to a market-driven ideologue.
Problem is, we have marginalised, impoverished, abused and undervalued broad swathes of society for decades. To expect everyone to suddenly make informed and enlightened decisions (or not be in a gang or whatever) isn't realistic. It takes consistent prosocial and supportive policies to create a cohesive, healthy and cooperative community. Neoliberal austerity and the worship of wealth has predictable negative outcomes which are not undone overnight.
Although age was linked with poorer outcomes in the outbreak last year this does not seem, to me, to be as strong with Delta.
The main risk factor for Covid is being unvaccinated. As Biden says it is a 'pandemic of the unvaccinated'. The NZ figures show a significant number of children who are not yet eligible for a vaccine are getting Covid
I am concerned that the 'old age' and 'elderly' trope is (still) being used currently and the net effect is to mislead people as to the seriousness of Delta for younger age groups. Of course, the younger you are the longer you may potentially suffer from the effects of Long Covid.
If there are too many affected then their future and the country's future does not look rosy.
sure, but it's trade off right? It's not like we get to go back to how things were before. So which freedoms should we give up in order to not have lockdowns? (or have less of them)
At the point there are enough vaccines for the population and a reasonable amount of saliva testing kits (with an automatic resupply) we can open up.
Make it mandatory that you can prove you're wuhan flu free before you get on a flight to NZ (or you don't get on at all) and get tested again when you land (positive test = equals getting on the next plane back from where you cam from)
how can someone prove they're covid free before getting on a flight? If they get a test 2 days before, that's 2 days in which they can get infected and the lag between infection and infection being detectable is longer than a plane flight.
Everything we are doing is fallible, so we're talking about risk and harm minimisation. Hence my question about what restrictions do you want to trade for greater freedom.
(and putting people with covid on a plane is a sure way to infect others. All sorts of worker rights issues there in addition to public health ones).
Sure but at what point do we stop severely disadvantaging children to protect the elderly, like climate change they are the cohort which will carry the consequences in the future. .. Social Isolation, Educational deficit all have very long term consequences
any argument that says kids vs elderly is on shaky ground right from the start. We need to envisions solutions that uphold the mana and wellbeing of all groups of people.
At the moment kids in Auckland are paying a disproportionately high price, not hearing much from govt about how they plan to alleviate that…
Online school isnt great to begin with and then there's a bunch of access issues for many with regards internet and devices etc. I had to buy an extra laptop so we could work from home and access school. All this shit is being glossed over its a big problem.
Sure but at what point do we stop severely disadvantaging children to protect the elderly, like climate change they are the cohort which will carry the consequences in the future
-You're protecting doctors and nurses from burn out
-You're protecting people who may need emergency care but won't be able to get it because of beds blocked by covid patients
-You're also protecting thousands of kids mums and dads who have compromised immune systems, not just the kids' grandparents (we've been told just today that 2 doses isn't protective enough for these people)
-who knows if delta gets away on us that it won't mutate again and affect more children? Delta itself is more dangerous for younger age groups than the original Covid-19
Absolutely, if this goes on for longer we need to pay attention to how we'll work with social isolation and education to ensure kids get some benefits from this. But kids' concerns aren't necessarily that different from adults . For some, spending time with family, having time to explore and try new things, not spending hours being driven to school, activities etc. are positive. They know enough that allowing grannie and gramps to die from a disease that they feel they could have done something to prevent could be even more traumatising than missing a few months school (cross fingers that's all it is for Auckland kids).
Of course, it can't last forever. But as you imply with climate change, a new normal has to be found. This pandemic could be a stepping stone to a better future if we stopped dreaming about an imperfect past and found a way to move forward in a way that's better for kids and the planet.
The consequence of your decision may be yours but they are not yours alone. With covid-19, a person's bad choices effects everyone they pass the disease to. The disease can pass to people even when they take all the right precautions and even when they have never physically met or even seen each other.
Unfortunately, many people suffer the consequences of having sex without a condom when it was never their choice to have sex at all.
The Barker family started with next to nothing when they bought this badly run down castle .I was one of the first to go through the castle in 1967 when the Barkers first opened the castle 50cents for a tour the money going to its restoration.
43 rooms is a gross misrepresentation it is only a very small castle about 12 rooms the other rooms are motel rooms added later.Sophie is a very nice person .Always trying to do her best to make Dunedin a better place.
It wasn't quite a Cargill's Castle-level ruin when the family moved in, but they sure took a proerty that was falling apart and made it one of Dunedin's prime landmarks. Back when that was still possible without millions in the back pocket.
In its early days, under Rod Donald’s and Jeanette Fitzsimons’ leadership, the party made a positive fetish out of its openness to the news media and interested members of the public. Over the course of the last decade, however, this openness has decreased to the point where, at the party’s latest AGM, no part of the proceedings (apart from set-piece speeches from the co-leaders and a final media conference) were open to the news media.
What are they trying to hide?
Perhaps it is this sense that the Greens have changed, that they are not what they were, that lies behind their 3-point loss of support.
Could be. More likely its simply the general impression of cluelessness that the leftist Greenies who control the party are embedding in the public mind. James soldiers on resolutely in advancing his govt portfolio agenda. Marama does what exactly? Hard to tell. There seems a total lack of Green leadership emanating from the GP.
Perhaps it is all with The Greens, or maybe the media and it's style if reporting has something to do with it
As an example, Checkpoint on RNZ, seems to be looking for the outrage.
The government draws a line for a border near Auckland and they interview someone on the 'wrong' side of the border. Government announces residency/citizenship (i forgot which) to migrants working and they interview the one who has left hospo and gone studying ECE, therefore inelligible.
TBF the Greens support for BDMR/ Gender Self ID, is causing dissent too.
It depends on how one sees the function of a conference. The formulation and discussion of truly new policy is sensitive and involves false starts and disagreements. However much our cynical media might like to harvest that for clickbait, doing so does no service to the party, nor to the causes it was created to further.
Love/hate? He often reminds us he's a Green voter. Tbf, the dichotomy between the Green movement & the Green Party will always loom in the psyche of those of us motivated by the difference between what is & what ought to be…
The unrelieved media adoration of ACT, in the absence of an even remotely plausible National, has done wonders for ACT's polling. The same sugar hit would have done as much for the Greens, had it occurred.
Still, Green schools and revisionist rainbow Mexicans will only take one so far – when the environment takes a back seat, its supporters lose interest in the remains of the party.
They tend to see it as bedrock, eh? Building on bedrock is sensible. Too bad they continue to shirk the task of doing the actual building.
Since I'm the one who showed them how to make consensus politics work 30 years ago, I always wonder what part of extending consensus is ever so hard for these turkeys to grasp.
Good point. I expect Ardern to win through this period of difficulty though. It's not as if Nat/Act seems a viable alternative to anyone with half a brain.
Your logic does work on the basis of sheeple psychology, however. Depends how ephemeral the drift back across the center line really is. Trouble with polls is that they merely indicate mass sentiment at the time.
There us also the chance that we'll end up through the worst of Covid and well into the coming financial maelstrom which could well see the tide shift very quickly as soft Labour voters switch back.
If the Nats put up a freindly face as leader wont take much…
Good point. That looming economic storm currently on the media horizon could come our way too eventually, but seems likely to break in China first. Globalised markets could provide a tsunami sloshing around for a while.
Not could, it will… inflation isnt going away for a start price increases are coming through daily, so the RB starts shifting interest rates which will be a hit on floating rates but once fixed term mortgages etc are reset will suck big chunk of disposable income from the economy to service the debt… that and people will stop using their home equity to spend so a pretty stiff belt tightening which will set off a chain reaction that will be very hard to do much about…. and if shit hits the fan overseas first we'll feel it pretty quick.
We’re already seeing market distortions that are pretty decent indicators of incoming problems… bit like Angora goats and Deer… except its more tied up in housing, art and collectibles like of all kinds look at NFTs or whatever theyre called.
Called even add billionaire space race to that list…
The Greens polled better than the polls predicted at the last election.
This government is Labour-no Greens are around the cabinet table. This parliamentary term has been dominated by the Covid response. This gives the Greens' ideas very little oxygen.
In 2 years time at the election all this will look different. NZ will have 3000 Covid cases a day and 12 deaths, but this will be the accepted reality and it will hit Labour in the polls.
The Greens' ideas will come through in the election campaign and they will poll 8-10% as climate change comes through as a key issue. Swarbrick will hold Akl Central, but the Greens won't need it to be in parliament and become part of a new coalition with Labour, but this time around the cabinet table.
BG you say "The Greens' ideas will come through in the election campaign and they will poll 8-10% as climate change comes through as a key issue."
I fear that is wishful thinking going by the Greens performance in this term. Their mojo is missing and they seem to be forever side-tracked into woke issues. I watch with dread as their support tumbles. It appears that somethings have become unstuck in their management and discipline because their embarrassing gaffs can't be solely blamed on the media gotcha moments.
Dennis, watching the 1 or 4 pms is a way of getting the direct info not stuff that has been filtered through the reckons of the likes of Malpas and Cooke and Cheng and Tova. They have a tendency to leave out the reasonings and clarifications.
Yes that is why I watch them too. I turn off at question time so I don't have to listen to the opinionated, and gotchas from the media. If I want to catch up on these I look at the written feeds that s come through at the same time as the questions.
You can always watch the live version at a time to suit.
JA has shown incredible patience with what passes for media in this country.
Still not keen to watch the questions again after spending many half an hours of my life during the first outbreak going 'OMG', 'are you for real', 'she's just said that………'
The only bright light was the questions from a reporter from one of the Maori media outlets, but to wait for his questions, which are usually on point and actually useful/helpful/in depth (judging from the responses he gets from those he is asking questions) means I have to listen to an 'awful lots of frogs'. The old joke about finding the handsome prince and how you have to kiss an awful lot of frogs in the process.
Auckland wants a target or a number? Some certainty. Some direction. The magic number to 'open up' or go to L2 ? It looks like Covid is spreading right across all of Auckland. Those numbers are not going to come. At some point the decision will be made using the dartboard system, blindfolded. The dartboard will be a calendar.
How about a target like Level 1 on the 1st of December for the whole country. That gives everyone a chance to get their first jab this week and 3-4 weeks later their second jab.
A little surprised new case numbers aren't bigger. Contact tracers must be working overtime. Expecting case numbers to explode soon and 'open up' targets will be distant dream. The mutinous mobs will be blissfully ignorant.
But why should the recalcitrants hold back the rest of Auckland and for how long? If Auckland's vaccination rate is say, 87% on the 21st of December, do we remain in level three for a further two weeks/month over new years?
Jimmy wasn't saying that recalcitrants would get vaccinated Robert. He was saying that would have had the chance to do so. If they haven't done so that is their choice. It doesn't mean that the rest of New Zealand should have to remain in confinement just because a bunch of idiots refuse to take protective measures.
There are a few people in New Zealand who cannot safely have a Pfizer vaccination. IIRC I heard Bloonfield say a couple of weeks ago that it was less than 100. I don't have a source though and I may have misheard it. However, cruel as it might sound I don't believe that we can remain shutdown for them. For those who can be vaccinated but won't they are going to have to take their chances.
We know the recalcitrants won't though, don't we Alwyn, so we'll consign them to the scrap-heap/ICU? They could pull themselves up by their boot-straps, right? Ayn Rand has a lot to answer for and I guess that's a weigh-heart-against-feather sort of issue. Gonna be ugly!
I prefer to think of all the people now overseas who can't exercise their right to return to their own country.
Or the people now here who cannot travel overseas to see a parent before the parent dies. They can't go because they can't get a place in the MIQ jungle when they try and return.
Or the people who can't get an elective operation and struggle on with the pain of a hip that needs replacing but which they cannot be operated on because the beds have to be saved for the selfish people who don't get vaccinated and therefore will get a much more serious and long lasting hospital stay for their Covid.
Or the people whose business, and all the work they did to build it, is being dumped on the scrapheap because they are locked down to protect the bums who won't make any attempt to protect their own health.
Or the hundred billion or so dollars that is being wasted because the Government would rather pay out benefits than let people work. And the young people who are going to have to pay off the borrowing in the future.
But they don't matter do they? Far better to allow a few people to refuse a vaccination that will protect them and make every socially minded person suffer for the few's selfishness.
I know people who are vaccinated who would die if they catch covid-19. Them being vaccinated is not for their own safety but to improve the safety of those who may come into contact with them.
How about letting my double vaxed Swiss national best mate of the last 17 yrs , my essential worker, my financial partner, back in NZ along with the kiwis for Xmas. Our farm is a perfect MIQ and I have been double vaxed since mid August. The work is piling up and the farm projects have been on hold for 18 mths now. I am not a superwoman, just a 73 yr old woman holding the fort.
Oz has moved to allow their citizens to return (first NSW and Victoria) to home isolation. Other states as their vax rates get up and they allow inter-state activity. We'll do Auckland first.
Their PM said no to foreign tourists in the meantime.
This does raise the issue about use of the managed isolation for incoming workers (or worker placement to onsite work places – orchards/vineyards and farms) before tourism.
He does not come as a "foreign tourist" He is as important to me and the farm as "Kiwis coming home for Xmas" are to their families and he will stay much longer than most of them.
Managed isolation facilities (hotels) are usually used by tourists – they are currently used for returning citizens and under a quota some workers.
But some workers (for example, later this year PI seasonal workers) are isolating where they will live while working.
So while there will soon be more spots for incoming workers in these hotels, some are already being allowed to isolate where they will live and work – such as on a farm.
You should seek advice about the process for bringing in a farm worker – if the person qualified then they would either come in through the hotel MI system or to the farm.
Yes thank you for your advice. I have already been down the Humanitarian road but declined due to the fact, I think, that we are not a married couple! ( Who would want to get married again at our age!) ) No the PM is saying no to foreign tourists. The way it is going , I think I will have to take my situation to my MP because we are going to miss another summer season – of long planned development work on the farm- some of it waiting half finished for 18mths.
and, by the way, seasonal workers coming into Switzerland from other parts of Europe have been isolating for two weeks at their places of work for about 6 months now.
First he has to get a visa …. Switzerland used to be Visa waiver country but not right now. NZ Immigration have already declined granting him visa after he applied recently.
They won't go back to Level 1 nationwide (they have sort of ruled out going back to either Level 1 or Level 4 – unless they really have to).
It'll be a move to the traffic light system in 2022.
The hope would be Level 2 in Auckland by 1 December, the reality will more likely a move from Level 3 lite (now) to Level 3 lighter, then to Level 3 lightest and onto Level 2 later in December.
The border might remain, albeit allowing those with vaccination passports to come and go (making it difficult to come in and then leave without a certificate).
OK. So the response for anyone who doesn't get vaccinated is "let 'em die".
What about vaxxed folk who need medical attention but the unvaxxed spread it to enough vaxxed people that all the beds are full even if we throw the unvaxxed straight in the bin?
If your Auckland business happens to be a hairdresser, then "Yes, it is worth a fucking haircut!"
So the response to the million or so that have been vaccinated is "Sorry, no travel out of Auckland for you as we have a few people that don't want the vaccination. Sorry about Labour weekend, Halloween and Christmas and new years….there's always next year" It's like a teacher making the whole class stay late due to one naughty child.
Such a shame that the tory brain can't compute that some of the people dying will have had their vaccinations but just be in the unlucky 10%.
The cult of individual responsibility refuses to believe that our individual choices might have repercussions upon others that can't be mitigated by their individual choices.
but fuck actual facts when you want to hate Tories right?
lockdown fanbois obviously don’t get the situation on the ground. As outlined way above in this post, the problem is south auckland. Lock that down and hard. Let the good people north and west who’ve had the jab get on with life. Kids at school developing. Adults letting their kids see their grandparents.
fuckfaces like you forget the human side of this pandemic in your quest to eliminate (not eradicate)
I said that some of the people who die will be in the group of people who got vaccinated but it was less effective for them.
100% – 90% effective = 10%.
None of the 90% will die, because the vaccine will be effective for them.
Clear enough?
Lockdown stress sucks. So does the stress of having friends and loved ones die, or long-term disabled (remember long covid?). Your experience isn't the entirety of the human cost of this pandemic.
If I thought I had read and heard the range of silly or ill-informed comments about Covid vaccines, new ones keep emerging. Pembroke Bird came out with this gem explaining why he and others won't get the Pfizer jab
"Overseas data shows that other vaccines have performed better in Israel, the USA and Africa. We've seen this and it's a good thing. We choose that option," Bird said.
What vaccines do you think the US has used? That's right, overwhelmingly Pfizer and Moderna,both exactly the same technology as we have available here. To a far lesser extent the Janssen vaccine, which is good but not as effective as the other 2.
How about Israel? Yup, same as the US. Pfizer and Moderna. Now giving a third shot of either to the more fragile.
So lets talk about Africa. That continent is desperate to get whatever it can. Egypt is leaning heavily on the Sinovac vaccine, which whilst it is decent at keeping you alive and suffering the worst effects of covid, isn't a stellar performer. South Africa has relied on the Janssen vaccine, Many other countries have no choice other than to take what they get – AstraZeneca, Sinovac, Sinopharm, whatever gets delivered.
Maybe that's the option Pem Bird says he is choosing, the wait and see what gets delivered into his letterbox, vaccine surprise, whilst hoping covid doesn't get to him first.
Moderna 2 doses provides the longest high level of antibodies (Pfizers immunity fades a little earlier). Of those in the UK, Pfizer two doses provides the most antibodies, but it's the AZ Pfizer combo that provides the most T cell response.
Just had a conversation with an ECE teacher in L2 and are fully vaccinated. 5 staff are away due to a virus and coughing. The person cannot go to work due to coughing.
I asked has anyone had a Covid test?
A person has to stay home until the test result is known.
No sick leave entitlement yet.
I then said, you need to find out if the government will cover your wages while waiting for a Covid test result. Also you would not want to be known as the teacher who exposed Covid to the under 5 year olds if you were positive for Covid.
People who work with children cannot ignore the possibility of being exposed to Covid. Some ECE teachers also have young children or primary school age children.
When schools reopen in Auckland some sort of mobile testing unit would be helpful to do the rounds at schools.
We need rapid saliva tests, and we need them fast.
My partner gets his brain tickled once a week just to be on the safe side as he travels a lot and has a huge territory. It wears thin after the 15th tickle, believe me.
Really what needs to happen is for people to start acting as if the virus was everywhere, as if everyone is at risk of infection at any time and behave accordingly, masking always, social distance always, keep bubbles small and managable, avoid big crowds (can we please stop the nonsense with big outdoor concerts for 22), and test test test.
Covid transmission cannot be taken for granted. In time I am hopeful that a better saliva test not requiring a lot of spit will be available and is as accurate as a PCR test. Needs to be affordable.
I am having to dodge a lot of discarded masks at the supermarket carpark and verge on the foot path. Lazy and inconsiderate people who dump them, I have seen them left in trollies. Mask disposal bins are required as masks are essential.
Mask disposal bins would be excellent. They should be handled/treated as bio hazard.
There are a saliva tests out there and they are used widely.
It would be in the best interest of all if we could each get these as easily as buying a pack of coldral in the supermarket. if and only if this test shows a positive then follow up with the brain tickle test. Not perfect, but better then nothing. I guess that having hte world be a testing tube for us is comfortable, but at some stage we also need to accept that these are the tools we have now, and while not perfect they still help.
Were a mask bin available it would need to be designed so people cannot retrieve the masks unless they are maintenance. Other bio waste is a risk as well, discarded cigarette butts. I also try and avoid stepping on spit.
I personally do what i can to keep myself safe as far as that is possible with an essential worker at home. I simply live life as if the plague was here, and as if i could catch it at any moment. And maybe we all need to do that, rather then wait for someone else to do the right thing. Also please keep in mind that there will be still people who will not be able to vaccinate due to age or health restrictions.
But we can also just continue to cry about spilled beans.
Yes 300.000 of them to some select businesses. I want them in super markets at a cheap and affordable price. So again, nothing more then a trickle where we need a flood. But again, this too is better then nothing.
The COVID-19 Short-Term Absence Payment is available for businesses, including self-employed people, to help pay their employees who cannot work from home while they wait for a COVID-19 test result.
Good to see this. Onsite here several years ago I got surprising push-back when I pointed to the residual patriarchy. After the initial eye-roll about leftists being thick again, I figured that denial was a wall to bulldoze thro so I adopted the policy of repeating that pointing on every suitable occasion to wear the buggers down.
There's a female Green economist who has been part of the solution a hell of a long time: Hazel Henderson.
One of her famous aphorisms compares the occidental economic model to a cake with four levels, with glass on the top: the first level is nature, the second level is the subsistence economy, the third level is the public and private economy, and the last level is finance.
Agreed – what's the use of targets plucked from people's backsides that provide an illusion of certainty but turn out to be wrong because circumstances change? Of course it would play beautifully into the Tova O'Brien school of confessional journalism – where every interviewee would confess their missed target and resign on the spot or disembowel themselves on-screen with a samurai sword.
The problem here is not really lack of plans, or communication or certainty. It's an economic system that leaves so many people precarious and therefore potentially devastated by any shock. Including minor capitalists who own small businesses.
It was suppose to be my day off on the Standard. Anyone else planning a circuit breaker and impulse getting the better of them? The number of comments on TS have been picking up.
Inflation at 4.9%, people will cut back on some of the treats. This will have an impact on business. Once the decision is made to pull the plug on the business or to keep talking to the bank, (fight or flight) other possibilities will be explored. Business people have a creative gene, they might need to step back, recuperate and then proceed.
Businesses should be allowed to fail over the coming months because, if the country is not pursuing an elimination strategy for Covid-19, it does not make sense to try to save every one, one economist says.
Have been saying that since last year. In fact it would be really really great if the good minds in government could come up with a way for people to close down shop without breaking commercial leases and being forced into bankruptcy and / or breaking existing laws. Many many businesses are still there simply for the leases they have signed well before Covid was even a thing.
Having a business partner instead of a sole owner.
Lease agreements are a huge stress. Predicting the quartely revenue is hard, along comes Covid and not knowing if the business can operate fully, partially or not at all and for how long, is a lot upon ones shoulders.
If a business dies, then given the laws of the market economy another business will take its place. You will still be able to buy your coffee from the corner cafe, the restaurant will still serve yummy food, and your favourite menswear retailer may well stock a better range.
A government would be liable for the survival of a business during a pandemic if there had been payment of pandemic insurance by the company to the government.
No insurance company will cover for Covid why should the govt.
So if we didn't have a lockdown we would have had a far worse outcome many Doctors and nurses dying on top of a huge death toll and a toll of long covid in the community predicted to affect 10 to 15% of the population .Damaging the economy longterm.
Pathetic Retaliation to Nationals poor Results in the polls.
No insurance company will cover for Covid why should the govt.
– Because the government is responsible for the lock down
So if we didn't have a lockdown we would have had a far worse outcome many Doctors and nurses dying on top of a huge death toll and a toll of long covid in the community predicted to affect 10 to 15% of the population .Damaging the economy longterm.
– When did I say no lock down, I did say with all the information available, if theres enough time and vaccines for the population then yes we should open up.
Pathetic Retaliation to Nationals poor Results in the polls
– They are bad but I'm glad you've got that off your chest
No different from a war, earthquake or extra rain in winter.
As a general principle however, one of the reasons to pay taxes is for mutual insurance against mis-fortunes such as pandemics.
I.E. Socialism.
There is no Capitalist justification for bailing out businesses that cannot survive the "slings and arrows" etc. Despite the rather nonsensicle claim, that the Government is fiscally responsible to individual businesses, for taking necessary measures to keep the country viable during a pandemic.
I’m sure that the irony, of the same people that complain about paying taxes or “Government interference” now complainimg about not enough Government help, is obvious to most of us.
Some are dying, some have pivoted, some are growing.
Pre-lockdown there were 152,502 jobs in the accommodation and food sector. End of Maty 2021 151,303. Overall it has rebounded pretty well. The spread maybe uneven but overall it doesn't seem quite as bad as all the doom and gloom merchants suggest.
Overall jobs are up on pre=-lockdown. Building industry well up. Transport is in a worse state.
Anyway what is the right wing mantra – don't like it get a better job, adapt, pivot, be flexible, get qualified etc. Why is some pithiness not applicable now.
I think this week they should announce the decisions they're going to make on December 1st. Based on circumstances now.
Then when they change their minds by December 1st because circumstances have changed, everyone can call them liars, say they're all over the shop with decision making and call them indecisive.
That's how it works doesn't it. Next years budget is going to be really important. Grant Robertson has probably made up his mind about some general approaches.
Why haven't we heard Lisa Owen on air haranguing Robertson, "Yes Minister, but if you have decisions now, why can't you tell us?" And some mention of transparency of course.
You are a one! Thanks chris T for the best laugh of my day so far. What's the point of telling us what it's "likely to be", when it might turn out to be something else. Or do you want the PM to give odds?
Ever been told by a teenager "that's too much information" when you have tried to explain something important?
The PM has to reduce being cross examined due to time restraints. She has to know what her ministers are reporting as well, and has the responsibility of managing the country.
It's a chance for the political pundits to share their/our wisdom over a weekend pint. A Friday night pint for the Week That Was, another for the Week To Be, one for the weekend footie and one more because that last tasted bloody good.
They must have some really bad news to release. It isn't just a Friday. It is also the day before a long weekend. That makes it a double-dump-the-trash day of course.
Bearing in mind the pre-disposition of many of those in hospo to complain about anything and everything about the actions of the Govt from wages, to levels, to not enough time to get our sh*t together to talk to you, giving them time to feed back ideas, assess them and formulate policy around them this seems to be worth waiting for.
Because at the start of the pandemic someone leaked that Lombardy was going to be locked down in 48 hours (they needed to mobilise and deploy folk to enforce it), so a whole bunch of infected Lombards went throughout Italy and Europe.
RNZ News just now reporting on radio a bipartisan housing announcement: Megan Woods & Judith Collins, with associates. Excellent start down a new path…
National and the government have worked together to design new housing density rules that would allow three homes three storeys tall without a consent.
In a rare show of bipartisanship, Labour government ministers Megan Woods and David Parker shared the podium with National's leader Judith Collins and housing spokesperson Nicola Willis to announce the changes at midday.
The parties worked together on a new Bill to amend the Resource Management Act, making it easier to build houses.
The obvious losers are rabid partisans of the left & right. Consensus politics can be made to work: where there's a will, there's a way. This clever move proves that point!
I was spitting nails when i read that. 3 story crappily build houses to appear everywhere and every one will just have to live with it!
but hey, who says that National and Labour can't find common ground. I am sure Grant boy is happy that hte govt real estate holdings will increases even further. Surplus! yei!
While there's life, there's hope, as the old saying goes. This initiative embeds centrist political ethos in Aotearoa for the forseeable future. It may even improve JC's poll rating! Scepticism is reasonable, nonetheless, so it will be up to the Nat/Lab leaders to ensure that delivery matches rhetoric.
The new default will be three dwellings per section, or an apartment up to three stories high, without the need for resource consent. District plans typically currently only allow for one home of up to two storeys.
Lifestyle block values will boom.
A great day for disaster capitalism – a lot of houses will be destroyed, to make way for the new (maybe rather than knock them down they should allow a pick up by those with some spare iwi land to provide for their homeless?).
maybe rather than knock them down they should allow a pick up by those with some spare iwi land to provide for their homeless?
Good thinking! I'd mandate that if I were the cabinet minister rolling out policy. Perhaps a prudent precaution would be around the costing of the home removal/relocation – a three-way split tween developer, buyer & taxpayer?
So much for our need to be more self sufficient in the future. I look at all these dog kennel units being built everywhere and wonder what the hell all the people locked up in them do. No wonder they're going stir crazy! I'd be lost without my garden, and proximity to a large reserve during these times of lockdown.
There's no planning for social infrastructure in this rush to ruin more and more sections and I can only foresee more cheap and nasty NZ ballsups.
I'm with you on that. Have the old quarter-acre first time in five house ownerships (sequentially) and am a keen gardener.
Chinese immigrants seem partial to shoebox apartments – probably due to it being the norm in their past. My final full-time job in Ak a decade ago was supervising the dressing for sale (homestaging) and I got to see how tiny they can be. Think that design got lodged in the heads of Ak planners & developers like a mental virus back in the '90s.
Sorry, but I think you are both wrong. The idea of the quarter-acre paradise was supreme while NZ's population was small enough, but those days are gone.
In the late 1970s -early 1980s I lived very happily in apartments in Cologne (West Germany) and Lyon (France). They were among the best years of my life; I never felt that I was living in an era of social decline, and was able to jog, take pleasant walks in parks/green zones as I wished. I kept fit and enjoyed a good life-style.
What you are now demanding as a birthright will condemn our over-populated country (controversial?) to years more of evil urban sprawl, eating up valuable agricultural land, creating future mayhem.
Sorry, but NZ needs to be dragged kicking and screaming into the 20th Century – or even the late 19th – when most other countries learned that house/garden, house/garden throughout the land was unsustainable.
If our population growth is to continue, our cities have to go upwards, not outwards. We just need to do it right. France and Germany did where I was back then.
But we didn't make that demand. I've been citified all my life & have no issue with better urban design. Permaculture does that and I have a permaculture design certificate. However lots of folk prefer to be closer to nature if they can & I'm just fortunate enough late in life to enjoy having the old settler bit of both.
In Australia, the three level walk up apartments are common.
Single houses fill a whole block(section) and then you get stand alone smaller homes 3 to a block, another combination is 4 units in two sets, or six units in a walk up 1 whole floor of one half as an apartment. Then small and large high rises with 1 bedroom 2 bedroom 3 or 4 bedrooms. This gives a variety of types for purchase, and stock for rentals.
Our problem is the 4 bed and office 2/3 bathroom homes being built. They are out of reach of most. So variety is needed, near transport hubs.
" I look at all these dog kennel units being built everywhere and wonder what the hell all the people locked up in them do."
Depends how much accessible open space there is incorporated into the planning rules, and social mixing in public housing, and public transport
Can we do this please, rather than putting houses and roads over good farmland and regenerating bush?
A livable city is a city where people live because they want to, not because they have to,” Vassilakou said. That translates into an emphasis on children and families, and making sure that the city can accommodate their needs: “A city that is good for children is good for everybody.”
About half the city is reserved for green space*, she said, and 62 percent of the population, including a broad middle class, lives in social housing.
*I'm pretty sure development of recreational space along the banks of the River Danube account for a lot of this. The Vienna woods are also on the the city outskirts.
The housing part of Vienna’s livability story in complemented by another important factor—the ease and affordability of transportation. Residents are served by one of Europe’s more comprehensive public transit systems, a network of subway, buses, and trams that residents can access for a flat annual fee of €365. And most do. “Close your eyes and imagine that, for one euro a day, you could go anywhere you want, as often as you want to, using public transit”
Exactly. 20 years ago we bought a two bedroom unit 1 of 2 on a cross lease. Friends thought we were mad at the time. We own it do not have a body corp and they are all paying mega bucks to move into retirement villages, and a hefty weekly fee.
This morning at Mataharehare, contractors arrived to begin work on the proposed National Erebus Monument. After a stand-off with protestors and police, the contractors left.
The Ministry of Arts and Culture are pressing ahead with this project despite widespread public opposition, opposition from local mana whenua and many of the Erebus families, a rahui having been placed on the site, and an active Ombudsman's investigation. The Ombudsman has written to the Ministry asking them to cease work until his investigation has been finalised. They have refused.
Dame Naida Glavish has published her communication with the PM, the Ministry of Arts and Culture and various other local and central government bodies on this issue, setting out the alleged misrepresentation and inadequate consultation around this issue. For anyone concerned about democracy her communications are a chilling read.
Here's an insight into the proposed works, from Dame Naida:
"The Ministry proposes 534sqm of earthworks on the Pā s a d clud g directly to the
north of the Tupuna Pōhu u awa ha s as old as Te Tiriti o Waitangi. It proposes to insert tonnes of concrete and steel directly in front of this great Rakau and into its roots that reach down toward te Waitematā."
Unfortunately, this is firmly at the feet of the PM. She made a promise to "a couple of" Erebus families that the memorial would be sited at that location. Apparently she now can't/won't back down.
A Kiwi PM that won't back down eh – extraordinary.
Mind you, NZ's political history is littered with PMs not backing down; think Key (public asset sales and the flag referendum), Key/Clark (unpopular anti-smacking legislation), Clark (foreshore and seabed), Bolger and Ruthanasia, Lange (anti-nuclear stance), Muldoon (pro-tour; at least we know where he stood), Kirk (cancelled the 1973 Springbok tour and opposed nuclear testing in the Pacific) et al.
You've got to know when to hold 'em [Ardern] Know when to fold 'em [Key] Know when to walk away [English] And know when to run [Muller] You never count your money [Bridges] When you're sittin' at the table [Collins] There'll be time enough for countin' When the dealin's done [Luxon]
There is nothing in this that reflects well on the PM, no matter how you spin it. She's made a promise she had no right to make, and a significant Auckland landmark is going to be detrimentally affected as a result.
Only in response to your attempt to paint this as something noble. My first comment didn’t attach any criticism to the PM. In fact it’s possible that initially she was simply ill informed, but now she’s digging in, and that’s not reflecting well on her.
Only in response to your attempt to paint this as something noble.
Bollocks. I listed several examples of former PMs not backing down; some “noble” and some not, imho.
My first comment didn’t attach any criticism to the PM.
Really?
Dame Naida Glavish has published her communication with the PM, the Ministry of Arts and Culture and various other local and central government bodies on this issue, setting out the alleged misrepresentation and inadequate consultation around this issue. For anyone concerned about democracy her communications are a chilling read.
As I said, your 'concern' is noted – keep digging for those "nothing in this that reflects well on the PM" stories, and mind the dirt.
now she’s digging in, and that’s not reflecting well on her.
How is my comment a criticism of the PM? The PM was Minister of Arts and Culture when this got underway. Dame Naida’s communications are critical of processes undertaken by that ministry specifically. Have you read them? Do you think those processes are ok?
As far as not reflecting well on the PM, that is evident. She made promises to a very small number of families that overrode the wishes of the majority, that defied the advice of the governments own commissioned report, and that defied the survey of families conducted to assess a location. As I said, she may have been misinformed at the time. But now that all of the misinformation and poor process has been uncovered, she has an opportunity to put this right.
I joined the dots and thought you were suggesting that Dame Naida Glavish's “communication with the PM” formed part of "a chilling read". Apologies for getting that wrong, and/or possibly misinterpreting "a chilling read" as criticism. Thanks for making your intentions clear.
Are you sure it is not a few in opposition to the memorial, that are overriding the wishes of the families and community because they got their noses out of joint?
The line you're hearing is wrong, but I don't blame you for that. There has been a huge misinformation campaign from the Ministry around that. Just on mana whenua involvement, here are some examples of how this process lacked genuine support and consultation:
It was local iwi representatives (from Ngatiu Whatua Orakei) who placed the rahui on the site.
The shortlisted designs were finalised without any input from mana whenua.
In August 2019, Ngati Whanaunga raised concerns that the Ministry had falsely claimed the support of man whenua, and requested a whole of mana whenua review. This was declined.
When the archaeological assessment of the site was conducted, the assessors wrote that their review “does not include an assessment of Maori cultural values. Such assessments should only be made by the tangata whenua”. The Ministry ignored this recomendation.
There's lots more. This has been a shabby process, with mana whenua and the majority of families sidelined by a deceptive ministry.
1. Colmar Brunton were commissioned to conduct a survey of Erebus families to get feedback on a suitable location. Based on the results of that survey, Mataharehare is totally unsuitable.
2. The Boffa Miskell report, commissioned by the Ministry, highlighted a number of problems with the site, and recomended a location closer to Auckland Airport.
3. Following the CM survey and the BM report, Auckland Council invited Ministry officials to Auckland to view alternate sites. The Ministry rejected that offer on 20 August 2018, and wrote that staff would “come to Auckland (earlier the better) to discuss how we square things away with council on confirming the site and to visit the site with a couple of the family members we have a close relationship with”.
"A couple of families". Does this not smell to you?
The hospitality industry amuses me, no type of business even in the best of times fails anywhere as much as cafes and bars and restaurants, probably mainly because anybody who can burn a cheese toastie thinks they are a chef and those who can’t give you a drink at a party without spilling it over everyone in sight thinks they would make a great bartender. The ones that have failed would have fallen over without Covid help.
The hospitality industry, the tourism industry, the retail industry, all and any front facing other industries……….they would have all failed even without covid.
So a business that, through no fault of it's own, suddenly has no customers, and yet has to still pay most of it's fixed costs, "would have fallen over anyway, without Covid's help"?
So a cafe or bar in Auckland that has been forced to close for 10 weeks due to no fault of their own, and seen their turnover drop say between 90% (as they can now do a few takeaway coffees) – 100%, would have failed anyway?
Do you actually think about what you type before you type it or sense check it?
You have obviously never run a business (or shouldn't).
If we are going to let them fail as suggested, first we would need to legislate away personal guarantees on the lease or we're gonna have a helluvalot more homless families. Banks and landowners can share some pain.
from todays update and maybe we can stop that Maori bashing in regards to vaccination.
Only 66 per cent of Māori nationwide have had one dose and 45 per cent have had two doses, far lower than the national averages of 85 per cent and 66 per cent.
Yesterday Ardern said crowd-funding for a mobile vaccination clinic in Tairāwhiti shouldn't be necessary, though she conceded that communication between DHBs and Maori health providers wasn't always perfect.
The Government's rollout has been accused of being implicitly inequitable, and Cabinet rejected expert health advice to prioritise Māori and Pasifika aged 50 to 64.
A larger proportion of Māori were also not eligible for the vaccine until later because Māori are on average much younger.
According to Statistics NZ, the median ages for Māori males and females are 25 and 27 years old respectively, much lower than the national median ages of 36.4 and 38.5 years old.
It's also more common for Māori to live in harder-to-reach areas.
Whanau Ora providers sent a proposal to DHBs and the Ministry of Health in February with a plan to reach such areas, including using vaccination buses
On a completely unrelated note I love this movie, I really do. Its always in my top 5 action movies of all time
You have one of the best heroes of all time being a complete bad ass and its a woman and no one batted an eye because the set up of her character, the writing, the performance, the chemistry all contributed to a strong, flawed yet courageous, believable character carrying out the heroes journey to perfection
The thing is Alien is a horror sci fi classic but its horror first and foremost and very well done but Aliens is action sci fi with horror elements so yeah if you're wanting a retread of Alien you'll be disappointed but if you're one of the greatest action movies ever made you'll be happy
Quite similar to Terminator vs Terminator 2 really
Level 1 won't happen fullstop until children under 12 are vaccinated 1/3 of new cases are children.
Level 2 is a good short term solution until we get the future of NZ vaccinated.
It looks like the FDA might give approval by Dec 1 in the US.
If we can get that cohort vaccinated by the end of February then we should go to Level 1 .with masks with vaccination passports.by the end of 2022 with new antiviral medicines becoming available .We should be back to near normal.
Provided Covid doesn't mutate to a degree where vaccines don't provide protection.
Modelling this is going to get tough (one has to profile the infectious and their associates accurately) (we need the infectious to prefer the company of the double vaxxed).
This might get too high for comfort by 1 November (rising towards 200 and contact tracing capacity will end chance of any easing in November).
The data on the infected (no vaccination or one dose or within 2 weeks of a second dose or two doses 6 months ago) will be telling.
tbf … Bayernis one of the Great Clubs of Europe … Beckenbauer, Gerd Muller, Sepp Maier, Karl-Heinz Rummenigge, Lothar Matthäus, Jürgen Klinsmann, Thomas Müller … and Bavaria is one of the prettiest regions of Europe … socially & politically conservative ? yes … but let’s be fair about this … outrageouslygorgeous with it.
Have to say, we're better off here when there are some RWNJs around, much more interesting. You just need to up your game to the leftie level of political argument Chris and PR 😈😛
I've started a post, because he gives two very clear examples of SW influence: Scottish govt removing the word mother from its maternity leave policy, and the BBC changing its news style guide so that homosexuality means same gender attracted rather than same sex. I assume both of those are covered in the podcasts?
Found the first couple of episodes to be basic outlines.
Skipped Ep 4 as my download was corrupted, Ep 5 and 6 giving good specific information of the unquestioning acquiesce of government departments and institutions to Stonewall 'recommendations'.
Full and Frank discussions like the Puckish Christ Rogue test it might get up your nose but for democracy to survive we need to able to question both sides to get a better outcome.
Make a submission to the Emissions Reduction Plan! The pressure needs to be put on the Govt to make climate action a priority, please take the time to make a submission.
Right now, the Government is creating the most comprehensive climate action plan to date – the Emissions Reduction Plan.
It’s a big deal. It will set out exactly how we plan to reduce emissions over the next 15 years and it’s crucial we get it right.
Now is your opportunity to tell our elected members what things you support in the draft plan, and if anything is missing or needs to be strengthened.
…
The ERP will be one of the most important, most comprehensive plans this Government creates. It will set out exactly how each Minister across Government plans to reduce climate pollution to meet our emissions targets and address the climate crisis. If done right, it will set us firmly on the path to a low emissions future.
We know our kids and our grandkids need this plan to be as ambitious as possible. Help us show Government Ministers that there is overwhelming public pressure for ambitious climate action by making a submission.
Australia has by and large contained the virus within states. We could create some more borders and do the same. They say it's hard to put one around the Waikato but surely not as hard as having another outbreak. Containers would do a good job of blocking roads.
Many would think some jail time would be appropriate for the likes of the North Shore party ratbags.
I mean, technically as an isolation violation there's probably already the potential to detain them on health grounds. But then you'd need temporary facilities set up – stadiums are traditional – and everything goes downhill from there.
Unless you give them enough vodka and dope that they don't realise they're in isolation for a fortnight lol
As good as you'll get from the guy – still adamant that everything he said was accurate about a member of a specific gang doing a specific thing, but admitting that the specific gang member wasn't Harry Tam.
5 minutes to spare, and no sign of having worked with Tam or Mansfield in crafting his response (but good to see the complete text of the lawyer letter). May be just enough to get Peters off the hook though. Still if there was a gang associate present in Northland, then you'd expect them show up on CCTV footage…
The Mongrel Mob may be bad news, but as far as I'm aware, are not actual vampires!
It's not data they have had stats on so far (but obviously it is the sort of information any modeller would want to know if they were to make useful forecasts).
Pingao below was able to point me to a very helpful RNZ link.
It's a couple of days out of date, but it's showing 2005 total cases.
1541 of those are unvaccinated (of those 409 are under 12), of the 1132 unvaccinated eligible adults, 138 are hospitalised
91 of the cases are fully vaccinated, of which 3 are hospital.
There's also various categories of partially vaccinated. Make what you will of whether just one dose provides substantial protection.
Of those 409 cases in kids, 7 are hospitalised. That to me is a very good argument for why we should also be vaccinating kids as soon as we reasonably can, contra those agin vaccinating our kids.
What will inform on the under 7's, is if ICU care is needed for any of the cases (and how they respond to treatments available – such as monoclonal antibodies).
It's not that encouraging
as you note no great improvement from the first dose in outcomes over the unvaccinated (hopefully those with one dose avoid need for ICU care).
it's actually a little higher than 10% from infection to hospitalisation for those not double vaxxed (presumably for monitoring and treatments, as few are in ICU).
3 out of 91 is over 3% of the double vaxxed into hospital – we had hoped more like 1%. This maybe why they are looking at over the phone nursing with supply of the oxygen monitoring device.
A positive is that the low numbers of the double vaxxed being infected.
Another positive is that most of those being infected are not the older and vulnerable to more serious outcomes (thus low ICU demand so far).
Reply to Andre at 26. Try Radio NZ "Covid-19 data visualisations: NZ in numbers". Scroll down to "vaccination status of cases … "
Overall the website "visualisations" are not necessarily entirely accurate/up-to-date as I've seen other figures relating to say, DHB vaccination numbers on the MOH but it is probably a good guide.
Sorry – I've given up on trying to paste links as it doesn't seem to work anymore on my mobile.
Those unvaccinated vs vaccinated case rates and hospitalisation rates could probably do with being much more widely publicised. They really are that dramatic.
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Mazda Motor Corporation, commonly known as Mazda, is a Japanese multinational automaker headquartered in Fuchu, Aki District, Hiroshima Prefecture, Japan. The company was founded in 1920 as the Toyo Cork Kogyo Co., Ltd., and began producing vehicles in 1931. Mazda is primarily known for its production of passenger cars, but ...
Your car battery is an essential component that provides power to start your engine, operate your electrical systems, and store energy. Over time, batteries can weaken and lose their ability to hold a charge, which can lead to starting problems, power failures, and other issues. Replacing your battery before it ...
In most states, you cannot register a car without a valid driver’s license. However, there are a few exceptions to this rule. Exceptions to the RuleIf you are under 18 years old: In some states, you can register a car in your name even if you do not ...
Mazda, a Japanese automotive manufacturer with a rich history of innovation and engineering excellence, has emerged as a formidable player in the global car market. Known for its reputation of producing high-quality, fuel-efficient, and driver-oriented vehicles, Mazda has consistently garnered praise from industry experts and consumers alike. In this article, ...
Struts are an essential part of a car’s suspension system. They are responsible for supporting the weight of the car and damping the oscillations of the springs. Struts are typically made of steel or aluminum and are filled with hydraulic fluid. How Do Struts Work? Struts work by transferring the ...
Car registration is a mandatory process that all vehicle owners must complete annually. This process involves registering your car with the Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV) and paying an associated fee. The registration process ensures that your vehicle is properly licensed and insured, and helps law enforcement and other authorities ...
Zoom is a video conferencing service that allows you to share your screen, webcam, and audio with other participants. In addition to sharing your own audio, you can also share the audio from your computer with other participants. This can be useful for playing music, sharing presentations with audio, or ...
Te Pāti Māori are demanding the New Zealand Government support an international independent investigation into mass graves that have been uncovered at two hospitals on the Gaza strip, following weeks of assault by Israeli troops. Among the 392 bodies that have been recovered, are children and elderly civilians. Many of ...
Our two-tiered system for veterans’ support is out of step with our closest partners, and all parties in Parliament should work together to fix it, Labour veterans’ affairs spokesperson Greg O’Connor said. ...
Stripping two Ministers of their portfolios just six months into the job shows Christopher Luxon’s management style is lacking, Labour Leader Chris Hipkins said. ...
Tonight’s court decision to overturn the summons of the Children’s Minister has enabled the Crown to continue making decisions about Māori without evidence, says Te Pāti Māori spokesperson for Children, Mariameno Kapa-Kingi. “The judicial system has this evening told the nation that this government can do whatever they want when ...
It appears Nicola Willis is about to pull the rug out from under the feet of local communities still dealing with the aftermath of last year’s severe weather, and local councils relying on funding to build back from these disasters. ...
The Government is making short-sighted changes to the Resource Management Act (RMA) that will take away environmental protection in favour of short-term profits, Labour’s environment spokesperson Rachel Brooking said today. ...
Labour welcomes the release of the report into the North Island weather events and looks forward to working with the Government to ensure that New Zealand is as prepared as it can be for the next natural disaster. ...
The Labour Party has called for the New Zealand Government to recognise Palestine, as a material step towards progressing the two-State solution needed to achieve a lasting peace in the region. ...
Some of our country’s most important work, stopping the sexual exploitation of children and violent extremism could go along with staff on the frontline at ports and airports. ...
The Government’s Fast Track Approvals Bill will give projects such as new coal mines a ‘get out of jail free’ card to wreak havoc on the environment, Labour Leader Chris Hipkins said today. ...
The government's decision to reintroduce Three Strikes is a destructive and ineffective piece of law-making that will only exacerbate an inherently biased and racist criminal justice system, said Te Pāti Māori Justice Spokesperson, Tākuta Ferris, today. During the time Three Strikes was in place in Aotearoa, Māori and Pasifika received ...
Cuts to frontline hospital staff are not only a broken election promise, it shows the reckless tax cuts have well and truly hit the frontline of the health system, says Labour Health spokesperson Ayesha Verrall. ...
The Green Party has joined the call for public submissions on the fast-track legislation to be extended after the Ombudsman forced the Government to release the list of organisations invited to apply just hours before submissions close. ...
New Zealand’s good work at reducing climate emissions for three years in a row will be undone by the National government’s lack of ambition and scrapping programmes that were making a difference, Labour Party climate spokesperson Megan Woods said today. ...
More essential jobs could be on the chopping block, this time Ministry of Education staff on the school lunches team are set to find out whether they're in line to lose their jobs. ...
Te Pāti Māori is disgusted at the confirmation that hundreds are set to lose their jobs at Oranga Tamariki, and the disestablishment of the Treaty Response Unit. “This act of absolute carelessness and out of touch decision making is committing tamariki to state abuse.” Said Te Pāti Māori Oranga Tamariki ...
The Government is trying to bring in a law that will allow Ministers to cut corners and kill off native species, Labour environment spokesperson Rachel Brooking said. ...
Cancelling urgently needed new Cook Strait ferries and hiking the cost of public transport for many Kiwis so that National can announce the prospect of another tunnel for Wellington is not making good choices, Labour Transport Spokesperson Tangi Utikere said. ...
A laundry list of additional costs for Tāmaki Makarau Auckland shows the Minister for the city is not delivering for the people who live there, says Labour Auckland Issues spokesperson Shanan Halbert. ...
Te Pāti Māori co-leader Rawiri Waititi, and Mema Paremata mō Tāmaki-Makaurau, Takutai Tarsh Kemp, will travel to the Gold Coast to strengthen ties with Māori in Australia next week (15-21 April). The visit, in the lead-up to the 9th Australian National Kapa haka Festival, will be an opportunity for both ...
The Green Party has today launched a step-by-step guide to help New Zealanders make their voice heard on the Government’s democracy dodging and anti-environment fast track legislation. ...
The National Government’s proposed changes to the Residential Tenancies Act will mean tenants can be turfed from their homes by landlords with little notice, Labour housing spokesperson Kieran McAnulty said. ...
Green Party co-leader Marama Davidson is calling on all parties to support a common-sense change that’s great for the planet and great for consumers after her member’s bill was drawn from the ballot today. ...
A significant milestone has been reached in the fight to strike an anti-Pasifika and unfair law from the country’s books after Teanau Tuiono’s members’ bill passed its first reading. ...
New Zealand has today missed the opportunity to uphold the right to a clean, healthy, and sustainable environment, says James Shaw after his member’s bill was voted down in its first reading. ...
Today’s advice from the Climate Change Commission paints a sobering reality of the challenge we face in combating climate change, especially in light of recent Government policy announcements. ...
Minister for Disability Issues Penny Simmonds appears to have delayed a report back to Cabinet on the progress New Zealand is making against international obligations for disabled New Zealanders. ...
Hundreds of New Zealand families affected by Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorder (FASD) will benefit from a new Government focus on prevention and treatment, says Health Minister Dr Shane Reti. “We know FASD is a leading cause of preventable intellectual and neurodevelopmental disability in New Zealand,” Dr Reti says. “Every day, ...
Regional Development Minister Shane Jones today attended the official opening of Kaikohe’s new $14.7 million sports complex. “The completion of the Kaikohe Multi Sports Complex is a fantastic achievement for the Far North,” Mr Jones says. “This facility not only fulfils a long-held dream for local athletes, but also creates ...
Foreign Minister Winston Peters’ engagements in Türkiye this week underlined the importance of diplomacy to meet growing global challenges. “Returning to the Gallipoli Peninsula to represent New Zealand at Anzac commemorations was a sombre reminder of the critical importance of diplomacy for de-escalating conflicts and easing tensions,” Mr Peters ...
Ambassador Millar, Burgemeester, Vandepitte, Excellencies, military representatives, distinguished guests, ladies and gentlemen – good morning and welcome to this sacred Anzac Day dawn service. It is an honour to be here on behalf of the Government and people of New Zealand at Buttes New British Cemetery, Polygon Wood – a deeply ...
Distinguished guests - It is an honour to return once again to this site which, as the resting place for so many of our war-dead, has become a sacred place for generations of New Zealanders. Our presence here and at the other special spaces of Gallipoli is made ...
Mai ia tawhiti pamamao, te moana nui a Kiwa, kua tae whakaiti mai matou, ki to koutou papa whenua. No koutou te tapuwae, no matou te tapuwae, kua honoa pumautia. Ko nga toa kua hinga nei, o te Waipounamu, o te Ika a Maui, he okioki tahi me o ...
Paul Goldsmith will take on responsibility for the Media and Communications portfolio, while Louise Upston will pick up the Disability Issues portfolio, Prime Minister Christopher Luxon announced today. “Our Government is relentlessly focused on getting New Zealand back on track. As issues change in prominence, I plan to adjust Ministerial ...
Recreational catch limits will be reduced in areas of Fiordland and the Chatham Islands to help keep those fisheries healthy and sustainable, Oceans and Fisheries Minister Shane Jones says. The lower recreational daily catch limits for a range of finfish and shellfish species caught in the Fiordland Marine Area and ...
Energy Minister Simeon Brown has welcomed an important milestone in New Zealand’s hydrogen future, with the opening of the country’s first network of hydrogen refuelling stations in Wiri. “I want to congratulate the team at Hiringa Energy and its partners K one W one (K1W1), Mitsui & Co New Zealand ...
The coalition Government is delivering on its commitment to improve resource management laws and give greater certainty to consent applicants, with a Bill to amend the Resource Management Act (RMA) expected to be introduced to Parliament next month. RMA Reform Minister Chris Bishop has today outlined the first RMA Amendment ...
Overseas models for regulating the oil and gas sector, including their decommissioning regimes, are being carefully scrutinised as a potential template for New Zealand’s own sector, Resources Minister Shane Jones says. The Coalition Government is focused on rebuilding investor confidence in New Zealand’s energy sector as it looks to strengthen ...
Emergency Management and Recovery Minister Mark Mitchell has today released the Report of the Government Inquiry into the response to the North Island Severe Weather Events. “The report shows that New Zealand’s emergency management system is not fit-for-purpose and there are some significant gaps we need to address,” Mr Mitchell ...
Justice Minister Paul Goldsmith is today travelling to Europe where he’ll update the United Nations Human Rights Council on the Government’s work to restore law and order. “Attending the Universal Periodic Review in Geneva provides us with an opportunity to present New Zealand’s human rights progress, priorities, and challenges, while ...
Associate Agriculture Minister, Mark Patterson, formally reopened the world’s largest wool processing facility today in Awatoto, Napier, following a $50 million rebuild and refurbishment project. “The reopening of this facility will significantly lift the economic opportunities available to New Zealand’s wool sector, which already accounts for 20 per cent of ...
Hon Andrew Bayly, Minister for Small Business and Manufacturing At the Southland Otago Regional Engineering Collective (SOREC) Summit, 18 April, Dunedin Ngā mihi nui, Ko Andrew Bayly aho, Ko Whanganui aho Good Afternoon and thank you for inviting me to open your summit today. I am delighted ...
The Government is delivering on its commitment to bring back the Three Strikes legislation, Associate Justice Minister Nicole McKee announced today. “Our Government is committed to restoring law and order and enforcing appropriate consequences on criminals. We are making it clear that repeat serious violent or sexual offending is not ...
Foreign Minister Winston Peters has today announced four new diplomatic appointments for New Zealand’s overseas missions. “Our diplomats have a vital role in maintaining and protecting New Zealand’s interests around the world,” Mr Peters says. “I am pleased to announce the appointment of these senior diplomats from the ...
New Zealand is contributing NZ$7 million to support communities affected by severe food insecurity and other urgent humanitarian needs in Ethiopia and Somalia, Foreign Minister Rt Hon Winston Peters announced today. “Over 21 million people are in need of humanitarian assistance across Ethiopia, with a further 6.9 million people ...
Minister for Arts, Culture and Heritage Paul Goldsmith is congratulating Mataaho Collective for winning the Golden Lion for best participant in the main exhibition at the Venice Biennale. "Congratulations to the Mataaho Collective for winning one of the world's most prestigious art prizes at the Venice Biennale. “It is good ...
The Government is reforming financial services to improve access to home loans and other lending, and strengthen customer protections, Commerce and Consumer Affairs Minister Andrew Bayly and Housing Minister Chris Bishop announced today. “Our coalition Government is committed to rebuilding the economy and making life simpler by cutting red tape. We are ...
“China remains a strong commercial opportunity for Kiwi exporters as Chinese businesses and consumers continue to value our high-quality safe produce,” Trade and Agriculture Minister Todd McClay says. Mr McClay has returned to New Zealand following visits to Beijing, Harbin and Shanghai where he met ministers, governors and mayors and engaged in trade and agricultural events with the New ...
Prime Minister Christopher Luxon has completed a successful trip to Singapore, Thailand and the Philippines, deepening relationships and capitalising on opportunities. Mr Luxon was accompanied by a business delegation and says the choice of countries represents the priority the New Zealand Government places on South East Asia, and our relationships in ...
New Zealand is demonstrating its commitment to reducing global greenhouse emissions, and supporting clean energy transition in South East Asia, through a contribution of NZ$41 million (US$25 million) in climate finance to the Asian Development Bank (ADB)-led Energy Transition Mechanism (ETM). Prime Minister Christopher Luxon and Climate Change Minister Simon Watts announced ...
The Government is today releasing a list of organisations who received letters about the Fast-track applications process, says RMA Reform Minister Chris Bishop. “Recently Ministers and agencies have received a series of OIA requests for a list of organisations to whom I wrote with information on applying to have a ...
Attorney-General Judith Collins today announced the appointment of Wellington Barrister David Jonathan Boldt as a Judge of the High Court, and the Honourable Justice Matthew Palmer as a Judge of the Court of Appeal. Justice Boldt graduated with an LLB from Victoria University of Wellington in 1990, and also holds ...
Education Minister Erica Stanford will lead the New Zealand delegation at the 2024 International Summit on the Teaching Profession (ISTP) held in Singapore. The delegation includes representatives from the Post Primary Teachers’ Association (PPTA) Te Wehengarua and the New Zealand Educational Institute (NZEI) Te Riu Roa. The summit is co-hosted ...
A stopbank upgrade project in Tairawhiti partly funded by the Government has increased flood resilience for around 7000ha of residential and horticultural land so far, Regional Development Minister Shane Jones says. Mr Jones today attended a dawn service in Gisborne to mark the end of the first stage of the ...
Foreign Affairs Minister Winston Peters will represent the Government at Anzac Day commemorations on the Gallipoli Peninsula next week and engage with senior representatives of the Turkish government in Istanbul. “The Gallipoli campaign is a defining event in our history. It will be a privilege to share the occasion ...
Science, Innovation and Technology and Defence Minister Judith Collins will next week attend the OECD Science and Technology Ministerial conference in Paris and Anzac Day commemorations in Belgium. “Science, innovation and technology have a major role to play in rebuilding our economy and achieving better health, environmental and social outcomes ...
Prime Minister Christopher Luxon held a bilateral meeting today with the President of the Philippines, Ferdinand Marcos Jr. The Prime Minister was accompanied by MP Paulo Garcia, the first Filipino to be elected to a legislature outside the Philippines. During today’s meeting, Prime Minister Luxon and President Marcos Jr discussed opportunities to ...
The Government has announced that $20 million in funding will be made available to Westport to fund much needed flood protection around the town. This measure will significantly improve the resilience of the community, says Local Government Minister Simeon Brown. “The Westport community has already been allocated almost $3 million ...
The Government is proud to support the first ever Repco Supercars Championship event in Taupō as up to 70,000 motorsport fans attend the Taupō International Motorsport Park this weekend, says Economic Development Minister Melissa Lee. “Anticipation for the ITM Taupō Super400 is huge, with tickets and accommodation selling out weeks ...
Local Government Minister Simeon Brown has announced an increase to the Rates Rebate Scheme, putting money back into the pockets of low-income homeowners. “The coalition Government is committed to bringing down the cost of living for New Zealanders. That includes targeted support for those Kiwis who are doing things tough, such ...
The Coalition Government is investing in a project to boost survival rates of New Zealand mussels and grow the industry, Oceans and Fisheries Minister Shane Jones has announced. “This project seeks to increase the resilience of our mussels and significantly boost the sector’s productivity,” Mr Jones says. “The project - ...
Benefit figures released today underscore the importance of the Government’s plan to rebuild the economy and have 50,000 fewer people on Jobseeker Support, Social Development and Employment Minister Louise Upston says. “Benefit numbers are still significantly higher than when National was last in government, when there was about 70,000 fewer ...
The Government’s commitment to doubling New Zealand’s renewable energy capacity is backed by new data showing that clean energy has helped the country reach its lowest annual gross emissions since 1999, Climate Change Minister Simon Watts says. New Zealand’s latest Greenhouse Gas Inventory (1990-2022) published today, shows gross emissions fell ...
The Government is bringing the earthquake-prone building review forward, with work to start immediately, and extending the deadline for remediations by four years, Building and Construction Minister Chris Penk says. “Our Government is focused on rebuilding the economy. A key part of our plan is to cut red tape that ...
Prime Minister Christopher Luxon and his Thai counterpart, Prime Minister Srettha Thavisin, have today agreed that New Zealand and the Kingdom of Thailand will upgrade the bilateral relationship to a Strategic Partnership by 2026. “New Zealand and Thailand have a lot to offer each other. We have a strong mutual desire to build ...
RMA Reform Minister Chris Bishop and Transport Minister Simeon Brown have today announced the Coalition Government’s intention to extend port coastal permits for a further 20 years, providing port operators with certainty to continue their operations. “The introduction of the Resource Management Act in 1991 required ports to obtain coastal ...
Today’s announcement that inflation is down to 4 per cent is encouraging news for Kiwis, but there is more work to be done - underlining the importance of the Government’s plan to get the economy back on track, acting Finance Minister Chris Bishop says. “Inflation is now at 4 per ...
The pair opened their first fully collaborative exhibition, Nina for Flowers, last Saturday. Gabi Lardies visited their studio to find out who Nina is and what working together was like.‘It didn’t start out like, ‘This is a show about Nina,’” says Josephine Jelicich, gripping a thermos of peppermint tea. ...
Thank you, Dr Maximilian Oskar Bircher-Benner, for your brilliant invention. I’m another mid-20s Kiwi who had an OE last year. I hopped on my bicycle where France meets the Atlantic and cycled east. I pedalled through the Loire Valley, down rivers lined with willows and ancient wisteria-draped chateaus. I relished ...
Asia Pacific Report From France to Australia, university pro-Palestine protests in the United States have now spread to several countries with students pitching on-campus camps. And students at Columbia and other US universities remain defiant as campuses have witnessed the biggest protests since the anti-Vietnam war and anti-apartheid eras in ...
Analysis by Dr Bryce Edwards, Democracy Project (https://democracyproject.nz)New Zealand Government’s Fast Track legislation. Many criticisms are being made of the Government’s Fast Track Approvals Bill, including by this writer. But as with everything in politics, every story has two sides, and both deserve attention. It’s important to understand what the Government ...
Tara Ward talks to presenter Naomi Toilalo about the new TV show that turns food waste into a three course feast. Naomi Toilalo is standing in the warehouse at Good Neighbour Tauranga, helping unpack the two-and-a-half tonnes of rejected food that will arrive at the community support hub that day. ...
Scout is our latest Dog of the Month. This feature was offered as a reward during our What’s Eating Aotearoa PledgeMe campaign. Thank you to Scout’s human, Avril, for her support. Dog name: Scout (named after the little girl in To Kill a Mockingbird – she inherited the independent spirit ...
Megan Alatini takes us through her life in TV, including ‘terrible’ daytime TV, the class of Carol Hirschfeld and her most embarrassing TrueBliss moment. When she responded to a vague newspaper ad asking “do you have what it takes to be a popstar?” 25 years ago, Megan Alatini never guessed ...
A new exhibition in Wellington showcases the faces behind your local goods and services. Back in 1977, when I was a fine arts student at the University of Canterbury, I took a series of photographs of Christchurch shopkeepers. The photos were for a calendar – a project for my end ...
Toomaj and his resistance to tyranny through his songs have become an icon for the youth of Iran, so his sentence has hit the nation hard. Toomaj Salehi is not the first artist to pay the price for standing with the people. ...
My cousin Dylan and I spotted these big eels under the bridge that summer. We watched them lounging under the dark weed, facing into the flow of water, their mouths frozen open. Dylan and I couldn’t stop thinking about those eels. The night we went down to the creek, we ...
Newsroom, home of satire. My long-running weekly satirical series The Secret Diary has moved to Newsroom and will appear every Saturday, with Victor Billot’s wildly popular satirical Odes continuing to appear every Sunday. Diaries, Odes – while serious political columnists toil at meaningful opinions and stroke their chins to an ...
Tara Ward unravels the many nuanced layers of a cartoon about talking dogs.This is an excerpt from our weekly pop culture newsletter Rec Room. Sign up here. It’s not often an episode of a children’s cartoon has adults sobbing into their sleeves, but that’s exactly what happened this week when ...
Working as a doctor in developing countries to help communities achieve better health outcomes is nothing short of a life goal for Jessica Tater. The University of Otago medical student has her sights firmly set on joining the international humanitarian organisation Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) when she qualifies ...
There’s an island in the far reaches of Auckland’s territory, sitting off the tip of the Coromandel Peninsula, 30 minutes by air from the city or four hours on the slow boat. Aotea Great Barrier is off-grid, it has a population of fewer than a thousand people … and most ...
Asia Pacific Report An Australian author and advocate, Jim Aubrey, today led a national symbolic one minute’s silence to mark the “blood debt” owed to Papuan allies during the Second World War indigenous resistance against the invading Japanese forces. “A promise to most people is a promise,” Aubrey said in ...
Asia Pacific Report The Freedom Flotilla is ready to sail to Gaza, reports Kia Ora Gaza. All the required paperwork has been submitted to the port authority, and the cargo has been loaded and prepared for the humanitarian trip to the besieged enclave. However, organisers received word of an “administrative ...
Pacific Media Watch Palestine solidarity protesters today demonstrated at the Auckland headquarters of Television New Zealand, accusing the country’s major TV network of broadcasting “propaganda” backing Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza. About 50 protesters targeted the main entrance to the TVNZ building near Sky Tower and also picketed a side ...
Opinion by Lynley Hood. Forty years on from my 1985 Fulbright Grant, my disquiet over the war in Gaza evoked some troubling questions. The answer to my first question – What is the primary purpose of the Fulbright Programme? – was on the Fulbright NZ website. It says: US Senator, ...
The ministers responsible for green-lighting major projects need to be open about potential conflicts of interest, says Transparency International. ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Anastasia Powell, Professor, Family and Sexual Violence, RMIT University It has been a particularly distressing start to the year. There is little that can ease the current grief of individuals, families and communities who have needlessly lost a loved one to men’s ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Gregory Moore, Senior Research Associate, School of Ecosystem and Forest Sciences, The University of Melbourne Lichen, the first described example of symbiosis.AdeJ Artventure/Shutterstock Once known only to those studying biology, the word symbiosis is now widely used. Symbiosis is the intimate ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Kim Hemsley, Head, Childhood Dementia Research Group, Flinders Health and Medical Research Institute, College of Medicine and Public Health, Flinders University Olena Ivanova/Shutterstock “Childhood” and “dementia” are two words we wish we didn’t have to use together. But sadly, around 1,400 ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Peter Whiteford, Professor, Crawford School of Public Policy, Australian National University The government’s Economic Inclusion Advisory Committee has just published its second report. It was set up by Treasurer Jim Chalmers and Minister for Social Services Amanda Rishworth in 2022 to provide: ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Adrian Beaumont, Election Analyst (Psephologist) at The Conversation; and Honorary Associate, School of Mathematics and Statistics, The University of Melbourne The Queensland state election will be held in October. A YouGov poll for The Courier Mail, conducted April 9–17 from a sample ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Amin Naeni, PhD candidate at Alfred Deakin Institute for Citizenship and Globalisation, Deakin University There’s been much talk in recent months about what a possible second Donald Trump presidency in the United States could mean for Europe, Russia’s war in Ukraine, the ...
A brief round-up of submissions on the controversial proposed law. This is an excerpt from our weekly environmental newsletter Future Proof. Sign up here. Last week, submissions on the controversial Fast-track Approvals Bill closed just hours after the government released a list of stakeholder organisations who were sent letters advising how they could ...
A poem from Robin Peace’s new collection Detritus of Empire: feather / grass / rock. Cereal giving I see a woman’s hands, see her curious hands break a stalk as she walks through the tall prairie, the savannah, the steppe, wherever it was. See her idly bite the grass that ...
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 Hemingway’s Goblet by Dermot Ross (Mary Egan Publishing, $38)A handsomely produced (debossed cover, lovely ...
The Commissioner's decision validates the longstanding efforts of the local community and ensures that Awataha Marae will be managed to serve the needs of the local community, particularly for hosting tangihanga. ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Tristan Salles, Associate professor, University of Sydney Examples of Australian landscapes.Unsplash Seventy thousand years ago, the sea level was much lower than today. Australia, along with New Guinea and Tasmania, formed a connected landmass known as Sahul. Around this time – ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Felicity Castagna, Lecturer, Creative Writing, Western Sydney University Day Day Market, ParramattaPhoto: Garry Trinh I live on the edge of Parramatta, Australia’s fastest-growing city, on the kind of old-fashioned suburban street that has 1950s fibros constructed in the post-war housing boom, ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Michael Ryan, Teaching Fellow in Economics, University of Waikato GettyImagesfatido/Getty Images There is an ongoing global debate over whether the high inflation seen in the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic can be lowered without a recession. New Zealand is not ...
The ‘Wicked Game’ heartthrob is in his late 60s now. That didn’t stop him putting on a lively, goofy and very sparkly show. Apart from ‘Wicked Game’, which graces a sultry playlist of mine simply called 💋, my last sustained Chris Isaak listening session took place when I was about ...
Analysis - Two ministers were stripped of portfolios in a warning to Cabinet, drama broke out at the Waitangi Tribunal, and the gang patch ban bill ran into opposition. ...
Tara Ward makes an impassioned plea for some vital pop culture merch. In April 1999, I became obsessed with a new reality television show called Popstars. Every Tuesday night, five strangers transformed into music royalty before my very eyes as Joe, Keri, Carly, Erika and Megan were chosen to form ...
PNG Post-Courier In the early hours of ANZAC Day, aerial photographs captured an impressive gathering of Australians and Papua New Guineans at Isurava in the Northern (Oro) Province. The solemn dawn service yesterday was held at a site steeped in history, where some of the fiercest battles of World War ...
The PSA is shocked that Oranga Tamariki has used the cost cutting drive to downgrade its commitment to Te Ao Māori and remove many specialist Māori roles. ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Ian Kemish, Adjunct Professor, School of Historical and Philosophical Inquiry, The University of Queensland There can be no more powerful symbol of the relationship between Australia and Papua New Guinea than the prime ministers of these neighbouring countries walking together on the ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Sharon Robinson, Distinguished Professor and Deputy Director of ARC Securing Antarctica’s Environmental Future (SAEF), University of Wollongong, University of Wollongong Andrew Netherwood Over the last 25 years, the ozone hole which forming over Antarctica each spring has started to shrink. ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Viktoria Kahui, Senior Lecturer in Environmental Economics, University of Otago Getty Images/Amy Toensing Biodiversity is declining at rates unprecedented in human history. This suggests the ways we currently use to manage our natural environment are failing. One emerging concept focuses on ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Timothy Colin Bednall, Associate Professor in Management, Swinburne University of Technology marvent/Shutterstock Finding the best person to fill a position can be tough, from drafting a job ad to producing a shortlist of top interview candidates. Employers typically consider information from ...
Wondering where to host your next BYO? Whether its a small gathering or a massive party, we’ve got some recommendations. I was first introduced to the concept of BYOs at Dunedin’s India Gardens, a legendary but sadly defunct establishment, which purveyed enormous quantities of mango chicken to Aotearoa’s drunkest future ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Julien Cooper, Honorary Lecturer, Department of History and Archaeology, Macquarie University Julien Cooper The hyper-arid desert of Eastern Sudan, the Atbai Desert, seems like an unlikely place to find evidence of ancient cattle herders. But in this dry environment, my new ...
The sector says it’s hopeful her replacement Paul Goldsmith will be able to throw it a lifeline, after six months with a minister deemed missing in action, writes Catherine McGregor in this excerpt from The Bulletin, The Spinoff’s morning news round-up. To receive The Bulletin in full each weekday, sign ...
The government can't just rely on axing public sector jobs and has to do more to cut spending, says the chief economist at a free market think tank. ...
Rock The Vote NZ, known for its advocacy for minor party unity and its role within the Freedoms NZ Coalition during the 2023 General Election, celebrates this merger as a strategic enhancement of its operational strength and outreach. ...
Nearly everyone has experienced the frustration of something you use breaking and being difficult or expensive to fix. Proposed legislation could change that. It’s been raining on and off all Sunday afternoon but people are lining up outside a building in a corner of Gribblehirst Park in Sandringham, Auckland. In ...
What does a forever relationship look like when you don’t believe in marriage? And how do you celebrate it? This essay is part of our Sunday Essay series, made possible thanks to the support of Creative New Zealand.I’m going to do it, right now. I’m going to say ...
The Prime Minister has committed to resuming direct flights to Thailand. But it’s not a promise he will be able to deliver on anytime soon. The post Prime Minister jumps the gun in Thailand appeared first on Newsroom. ...
It’s not that long ago Eliza McCartney was seriously wondering if the Paris Olympics would be her pole vaulting swansong. After years of being hounded by injury after injury, the Rio Olympics bronze medallist was still confident she would compete at her second Olympics in Paris in July, unless something ...
FICTION 1 Take Two by Danielle Hawkins (Allen & Unwin, $36.99) There’s commercial fiction, like this book, and then there’s quality fiction, quality writers, quality literature; the forthcoming Auckland Writers Festival is full of quality, and ReadingRoom has two tickets to give away to the following events: Paul Lynch (Dublin ...
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There are quite a few regular commentators on here who, frankly, are beginning to piss me off.
I excuse the usual right wing idiots – like the Natz, they’ll criticise because, you know, Labour – enough said. I could name them, but you know who I’m referring to.
No, it’s the so-called lefties who are getting my goat.
NZ has probably had the best covid response in the world – the facts speak for themselves – 188th in the world in terms of cases, only just over 1000 cases during the whole pandemic per 1 million and only five deaths (per million).
There has been no playbook for this crisis – the government is literally making it up as they go along – yet these Captain Hindsights all preach about what should have been done 18 months ago.
Or they rabbit on about their rights being curtailed, as if they had no responsibilities. As if individual rights pre-empted collective responsibilities.
Then they go on about how the Labour government is not doing enough (which I can agree with for I too have been generally disappointed by the lack of radical progress in many areas) but then suggest they’ll give their vote to the Natz? Or worse still, Act??
A moment’s reflection should convince them that, on the evidence of right-wing governments world wide, covid would have been a fucking disaster under a Natz government.
But do they reflect? No, they bag the government. Well, they have a ‘right’ to do so, but reading their comments is getting a little tedious. And if someone does call them out, as happened yesterday, they get dumped on with abusive language.
I, for one, wouldn’t want to be anywhere else in the world at the moment.
Nor would I. I agree re the likelihood that things would be significantly worse if we had a National govt.
The thing that irritates me is Labour's tolerance of obfuscation. Either the public health officials know how Delta is being spread, or they don't. If they know, they ought to tell us. If they don't they ought to say so.
Instead we just get the number of unlinked cases dangled in front of us daily as if it were some kind of totem to be gazed at with fascination. Seems more like a bullshit scheme to me – and I have generally approved their performance.
Isn't it that they know how some of it is being spread, but not all of it?
Yeah, probably, but it doesn't change my view as expressed. I see no valid excuse for their failure to inform the public of the contagion pattern that they have discerned. If we were all the wiser after being thus informed, we'd be on board with the policy implementation strategy. We wouldn't have this growing loss of trust in their strategy.
Honestly, I think people's nervousness is due to Labour and MoH not being god. This is a really hard situation, they've not had a break in 18 months. People are understandably stressed, it's a really stressful situation. Who would you rather was running the response other than Labour?
I don't have a problem with Hipkins. He seems to be on the ball. I think the PM ought to be somewhat more so: she ought to explain the nature of the contgagion pattern. Causal thinking is hard-wired into us from our evolutionary past. I appreciate that pandemics are inherently mystifying, but getting a grip on how they work is always in our common interests.
As I mentioned below, could be that political correctness is defeating our common interest by getting in the way of the truth…
You have admitted that you havn't been listening to the briefings, just the media interpretations,.
The information has often been in the briefings and Government statements.
Whereas I wonder if most of the media has even been there. Certainly not listening. They mis-interprete and even lie about what was said so often.
As for question time, after the briefings, I just turn it off. The partisan ignorance, and lack of basic comprehension, of the so called "Journalists" is both depressing and irritating. .
Hmm, fair comment. See below for my take. I agree that the dichotomy tween briefings & reportage is a significant problem.
Over the last couple of weeks we have been told (Govt sources or answers at the ‘pressers’
a) families of over 10 people in each family are getting together
b ) families/groups are getting together inside instead of being outside
c) we are given locations of interest that seem to be suburbs in South Auckland & now west Auckland
I suspect some churches are 'hiding' by having bible study or services inside family homes and with larger groupings, but being less obvious than seeing a pile of people or cars outside a church. Last outbreak we had a couple of instances like this come to light.
For me the contagion pattern is in South Auckland, mainly, spread by groups or families of over 10 people who are largely meeting inside.
Looking at the demographics from MOH you can see the ages are mostly 0-59 years. Children are highly represented
0-9 350
9-19 401
Maori 599 and Pasifika 989 people are over represented. Hospitlaisation is 43 cases for Maori and 107 for Pasifika.
Vaccination status when reported as a case is also on that site total 2005.
1132 not vaccinated 138 hospitalised
409 less than 12 years old and therefore not vaccinated 7 hospitalised
going down to
fully vaccinated 91 and 3 of those hospitalised.
https://www.health.govt.nz/our-work/diseases-and-conditions/covid-19-novel-coronavirus/covid-19-data-and-statistics/covid-19-case-demographics
Judging by the difficulty of tracking some contacts, as my dad would say, I would 'hazard a guess' that some are involved in criminal or antisocial enterprises
That's an extremely comprehensive picture you've painted there. I suspect journos are too paranoid to report the ethnic problem: pc inhibiting their desire to report the truth. Delta getting the kids to that extent shows how different it is to the original contagion last year which had minimal effect on kids as far as I could tell. Thanks for the effort, which I reckon will clarify the view of plenty of others, not just me.
Thanks for a concise list.
Unlinked cases are interesting because they suggest there are unknown cases out there. And unknown cases are the danger because they can spread unknowlingly (or knowingly but uncaringly).
But unlinked cases can turn into linked cases once all the places where that person has gone is worked through or they can link through studying the virus genome.
Unlinked cases are the canary in the coalmine.
Well said Tony. You are not on your own.
I have learnt, pre Covid, to scroll on by one or two commenters. This has certainly paid dividends recently.
We need to look at what we have to be grateful for, what to give thanks for. Connect with nature, try a new hobby via University Tube, meditation…
100% concur with your sentiments gsays (1.2).
Well maybe if we got answers to reasonably simple questions:
https://www.stuff.co.nz/opinion/300431939/covid19-what-the-everchanging-icu-bed-numbers-tell-us
As someone that used to be in logistics I can easily say that this should not be a difficult question to answer
The main reason we have low numbers is mainly down to luck ie location, surrounded by water, low population so it seems reasonable to question the government given they've had over a year to sort things out
The main reason we have low numbers is that Labour went hard early on in the pandemic and eliminated covid from the community until fairly recently. Geography didn't make that happen, and as delta is showing us, Auckland is a population dense city not a low population once.
We could in fact say we've had two pandemics in NZ, covid, followed closely by delta. Our strategy for the first was very successful. Our strategy for the second is still being worked out because it is new.
No Weka, NZ and Labour got lucky.
When NZs population went into lockdown why wern't the borders closed?
How long did it take before border workers were tested?
Why did the government take so long to order the vaccines?
Why was there a delay in the vaccine rollout?
Why does no one seem to know how many ICU beds and staff we have?
Is it easier for the government to just say lockdown?
l. It is not necessary to close borders while Level 4-3 lock downs are going on (or when the local population is vaxxed up and its the vaccinated coming in).
2. Level 1 was sweet and it was unknown whether the vaccine would prevent transmission (it does not) – if it did a lot more ICU would not be needed.
3. Delay has allowed us to know the vaccination will not end the pandemic and to appreciate that its important to have the AZ antibody cocktail and Merck anti-viral available in our hospitals to support the protection provided by this Pfizer vaccine roll out.
4. We have ICU beds and trained and experienced ICU staff and supplementary beds with trained up surgical nurses (I would prefer we imported some pandemic experienced staff from OE into airbnb and maintained surgeries myself).
Yes you do.
2. Level 1 was sweet and it was unknown whether the vaccine would prevent transmission (it does not) – if it did a lot more ICU would not be needed.
You do not delay when a vaccine is available. It is better to have it and not need it then need it and not have it.
3. Delay has allowed us to know the vaccination will not end the pandemic and to appreciate that its important to have the AZ antibody cocktail and Merck anti-viral available in our hospitals before the protection provided by this Pfizer vaccine roll out fades.
You do not delay when a vaccine is available. It is better to have it and not need it then need it and not have it.
4.We have ICU beds and trained and experienced ICU staff we have supplementary beds with trained up surgical nurses
We don't have enough if the s**t hits the fan. The government has had over a year and should have been prioritising this (no thats not hindsight, thats obvious)
We allowed Kiwi to return to their homes in 2020 – during Level 4 and 3 lock downs.
So your reckon vs the record of history – we eliminated.
We had elimination and Level 1 – we did not need it (there was no COVID free world to rejoin to).
Most of us will regard 2021, as better than 2022 (albeit some will enjoy the easier come and go).
'We had elimination and Level 1 – we did not need it (there was no COVID free world to rejoin to).'
You are, again, incorrect. We needed it because it was clear by then covid is not going away.
We gave up personal freedoms and delayed the inevitable and the government squandered that time
Your reckons are not credible. What has “its not going away” to do with creating a safe zone and waiting to identify the future best course?
The many were better off with level 1 elimination in 2021.
The inevitable being pandemic spread and more death … . The choice to delay means in 2022 we will have treatments to save lives.
Waiting and watching was wise, the AZ antibody roll out to the unvaxxed and the Merck anti-viral treatment will reduce need for ICU care.
Watching yes, waiting no.
If there was a vaccine available, a booster available, testing swabs whatever then the purchase order should have gone in sooner.
I order firewood in Summer (cheaper that way), I don't need it in Summer (good insulation) but I know I'll need it in Winter
I don't wait until Winter happens, I order before hand in case of a back log of other people ordering, in which case I might have to wait
People would have died in 2021 if we had opened with earlier vaxxing. There will now be better medical protection with the delay.
Its not one or the other
You can have lock downs and order vaccines. You can wait and watch and order saliva testing kits.
I know its a hard concept for the average Labour politician but you can do one than one thing at a time
Prisoner of the Right you have Obsessive Conservative Disorder
PCR tests are far more accurate than the Quick Saliva tests.
Delta can easily missed even after 3 quick tests didn't show any infection a PCR test showed that person had asymptomatic covid.in a recent news article.
Your like a kid who doesn't get his own way having a tantrum today.
I wonder how you would treat one of your charges at work who was displaying this behaviour.
They did order vaccines while we had Level 1 elimination.
Sure they expected to complete vaccination first and then open up (and bring in rapid testing for this then), so yes they were caught out by not being able to realise elimination with the latest outbreak …
Do you get paid for taking part in PR's revisionist history?
'I wonder how you would treat one of your charges at work who was displaying this behaviour.'
A damn sight better than people with opposing views are treated on here
You're not getting the game:
– why didn't they get in early and order vaccines before they were out of trials
they did
– why did they order untested vaccines, knowing some might fail trials
or:
– why didn't they order saliva tests of undetermined or insufficient reliability
they did
-why did they waste money on substandard tests
PR isn't even the worst one. There are a few tories who would have been charged with treason if they'd exhibited similar behaviour in WW2, providing aid and comfort to the enemy.
These days, they don't even breach broadcasting standards because that minute of ranting was "opinion" not "news content".
Repeating bollocks over and over, Seymour and National's technique, doesn't make it true!
It was the travel bubble remember that gave us the joy of the Delta virus. And in that, despite having all the info we waited 3 weeks for the border to shut. This is like peeing in an swimming pool.
We had over a year to get everybody vaccinated and prepared to open the boarders. Pfizer offered but no, we are special, so special.
If my memory doesn't fail me, the first deliveries of vaccines were reserved for the elderly and Maori/Pacifica. This was months ago and I hear constantly the government failed them. Absolutely not.
The actual outbreak in August came via a person who came into managed isolation from Sydney after the travel bubble closed.
There will be more than one case of spread after we open up borders with vaccination at c90%. The spread rate now would be higher and nationwide if we had vaccinated earlier.
Most of the elderly are already vaccinated.
It may have been the Olympics/Paralympics that did it.
Yes, NZ and Labour got lucky as well. But it's pretty obvious that our values-base approach worked up until delta.
"Why does no one seem to know how many ICU beds and staff we have?"
You just posted an article that explains this.
"Why does no one seem to know how many ICU beds and staff we have?"
General incompetence and the wrong people being put in charge but really it was just another reason as to my arguement why its more luck than good management
Funny, because one of neoliberalism's first moves was to replace clinical managers with non-clinical managers from other sectors. Maybe it's not just a logistical provisioning thing, and having long years of experience working as a clinical manager would have given an advantage in knowing how to keep the system adaptable.
Then there is the health system undermined by neoliberalism, understaffing, and budget cuts. For decades.
Next you'll be telling me that the market will provide enough ICU nurses.
Neoliberalism is a convenient scapegoat isn't it.
We haven't done this because of (cue deep, forboding voice) Neoliberalism dun dun dun, we can't do this because dun, dun, dun Neoliberalism
At some point you'll have to accept that Labour has been in power since 2017 and, unbridled power, since 2020 and that Neoliberalism is an excuse
lol, the problems with the health system are on both National and Labour and predate this particular government by a long way. Those problems didn't arise out of thin air. If you replace clinical managers with managers whose purpose is to run a hospital like a business, then this is exactly the kind of stupid outcome you get.
I would guess because wards can become ICU wards or not depending on demand. And more beds can be put into an ICU ward if absolutely needed. Staffing is always a revolving target as people come and go, change departments, etc etc.
Geography was always the most important factor. We might like to imagine a scenario where the UK was so well managed that they could have implemented MIQ like NZ. Heres why that doesn't work…
First of all the UK needs to implement a successful elimination, by early lockdowns. This could never have happened but lets imagine it did. The UK population is 10x NZ population and much more integrated with Europe and Ireland in terms of trade routes. So we infer that the UKs MIQ needs to handle (very conservatively) only 10x as many people as NZ. NZ had a covid case escape MIQ roughly every 4 months. This lead to regional lockdowns for weeks or months. So in the UK the equivalent is some part of the UK will be locked down due to a MIQ escape almost continuously (or somehow UK MIQ works more than 10x better than NZ MIQ).
The regional lockdowns will hardly be eliminated in weeks as the population density is much higher. In fact the UK has been locked down for significant lengths of time but never has got close to eliminating the alpha variant regionally afaik, let alone nationally.
Finally elimination may have been possible around when there were hundreds of cases in the UK. From estimates this was around January 2020, before there was even widespread knowledge of the virus.
This is not to say the UK reaction was particularly good, there were more than a few mistakes made, but its mostly geography driving how the pandemic would work out.
Looks to me like each place needed its own solutions and systems. However, the values that we start with dictated how pandemic responses were developed in addition to the geography. Geography didn't make Labour go hard early, their health advisors and Labour's (and I'm sure Ardern's) values did.
Likewise, if we'd had FJK in charge (or Collins 🙄🤡), I think it's likely we would have gone down a similar path as the UK and the US, because of values.
PR is trying to argue that Labour didn't do anything good and just got lucky. While we have had luck as well, PR's position is plainly partisan nonsense.
Its certainly plausible that National in govt would have handled it much worse. Australia did similarly however with a conservative government so I wouldn't assume thats a certainty (again being somewhat remote geographically helped). But I have had conversations where people overseas suggested that NZs success was mostly about the political aspects and thats not intellectually justifiable. If NZ was in the middle of Europe we would have had a large outbreak even with the same policies in place and wouldn't have got to elimination.
Which is WHY we have gone for unique NZ solution – because we’re not in Europe, & we CAN.
We are still running an evolving, unique NZ system.
This is not to say the UK reaction was particularly good
It's not that their response wasn't very good. It was dire. Their own reviews say as much https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2021/oct/12/covid-response-one-of-uks-worst-ever-public-health-failures
Politics, hubris, incompetence and a bit of financial skullduggery are better explanations than geography.
You're right though, a comparison with New Zealand isn't fair. The UK's response needs to be compared with other small, densly population nations with regional roles in highly populated nearby areas. Measuring the UK's response against East Asian nations, which are far more geographically similar is a better way to judge what could be.
at a guess, part of the issue with the ICU figures is whether one is counting infrastructure or staffing. My understanding is that it's trained nurses on the payroll that determine what a 'bed' is, not the bed itself.
I see this is pretty much what Watkins is saying. Also,
To me it just looks like the normal outcome of neoliberalisation of the health system over the past 40 years. What did we expect?
No it is not.
This is a matter of simple logisitics. For example you take all the factors that make up a complete ICU ready bed and then go to the hospitals and get the information from them
Its really not that difficult
EG 200 beds and 150 nurses = 150 ICU ready beds (or however you want to call them) however Labour just can't seem to help themselves when it comes to spinning so they'd say 200 beds which is factually correct but obviously wrong
But then lets face it you had Clark as minister of health, which worked out really well, and now you have a union lawyer so is it really a surprise no one knows whats going on?
Emphasising because you seem to have missed this.
Each ICU bed requires 3 specially trained nurses, round the clock and dedicated to that ICU bed. So 200 beds = 600 nurses if none of them take leave or are sick.
Each ICU bed costs $1 million a year.
(Thanks for, where did you get those stats from?)
Should be more than enough in this lot for a few more beds then:
https://www.treasury.govt.nz/publications/budgets/covid-19-funding-allocation-expenditure#:~:text=The%20Government%20has%20signalled%20%2462.1,and%20Recovery%20Fund%20(CRRF).
The Government has signalled $62.1 billion of funding to support the COVID-19 response and recovery:
how many more?
Here you go Puckish Rogue
https://www.newsroom.co.nz/podcast-the-detail/upping-our-intensive-care
Assuming the nurses are going to have 2 days off per week, along with public holidays (either on the days or as alternative holidays later), annual leave and sick leave (and bereavement, parental and other leave), not to mention professional development/training and any similar reasons for time off, a more likely number of nurses is 6 per bed, so 200 beds = 1200 nurses who require 4 years of training after they graduate as nurses.
Also, hospitals with ICUs are usually close to capacity as part of the staffing and funding model, so additional capacity comes at the cost of capacity somewhere else, or a few years to physically build more capacity at a time when building labour and material supply are quite constrained.
Exactly. Then you have the ongoing process of not knowing how many nurses are on the cusp of getting qualified for that setting, and how many are set to look at the time to come and find other work. Then there are the beds: the maintenance schedules of every single machine around each bed, and whether one machine being actually used in another ward means that bed is no longer ICU-standard (but could be if needs be).
Across twenty different organisations which might each have a couple different sub-units (aka "hospitals") and management structures long-trained to gaming the system (e.g. fudging ED admissions in the 1990s-2000s), and it's a substantially more complex logistics issue than PR thinks.
Well said – a characteristic of many right-wing govts is their weak pretense of governing for society as a whole, while giving COVID a helping hand to take the hindmost.
If National had been in government Bill English would have been PM.
We may get on your goat, but in a functioning democracy I believe it is our duty to critique the government at every turn.
So many people treat politics like sport. We cheer on our side, and so long as we are beating the Nats, then everything is apparently awesome. There is a general obsession from some to almost have a daily post about National, which is just plain weird in my view. They are irrelevant.
You can be broadly in support of the government's response to COVID, while at the same time being critical of certain aspects of that response. That is healthy for good decsion making. Its not treason to criticise.
I wouldn't have wanted to be anywhere other than New Zealand over the past two years, and I'm very glad National wasn't in government. But that shouldn't discourage lefties from calling out the government when they deserve it.
seriously – try driving a car with a passenger who critiques you at every turn.
Now do it with someone who only critiques to when there is a safety issue or you are going in completely the wrong direction.
Now imagine you're driving a station wagon with five million kids in the back.
I'm gobsmacked Ardern hasn't dropped at least one "fuck all y'all", flipped a double bird, and walked out of a single press briefing.
Especially the "Are we there yet?" or "We want to know what's going to happen"
Or the real pearler "Give us certainty" in a Pandemic.
Its kind of like when you're driving through terrible weather and you can hardly see 5 metres in front of you, but your driver carefully navigates through the stormy weather, while some of your neighbours are reckless and crash.
Then you come to a lull in the weather and the driver rightly congratualtes themself for getting eveyone to that point safely.
Meanwhile your reckless neighbours upgrade their cars with urgency to protect them in the storm as they are still stuck in the middle of it.
The passenger sees darker scarier storm clouds on the horizon and suggests to the driver that maybe we should also upgrade the car before the second storm gets here. The driver says, no urgency as I have got you through the storm and we don't need that upgrade like our neighbours.
Then, predictably, but without warning, the storm hits.
The passenger says didn't I tell you so.
The passenger is still your mate. Don't hate him.
Upgrade a car midjourney?
Seems easy enough. We'll just increase the wheelbase with a spanner, shall we? I'm sure everyone in the backseat knows how to do that /sarc
Upgrading the car mid journey is exactly what we are doing now.
It's a completely different set-up to what we were driving in April 2020. I know some people just want to go back and do what we did then as it worked. But the storm has evolved and so to does our car need to.
See you are proving my point. Crticism isn't anti-government.
Cheer leading is a bigger issue in my view.
Yeah, nah.
We're taking different routes – miq vs "open border but isolate at home", L4 early instead of wishful thinking.
And this is a discussion. As opposed to what is possible with government – unless we have 5 million comms staff all responding to each others bullshit concerns.
And then some tories would just complain about too many comms staff.
And then there's your false equivalence between an (albeit asymmetric rather than face to face, where you know I receive your message as soon as you finish talking) comment:response format between a small number of people where both are ostensibly commenting in good faith, vs some fucking opinionator in an editorial spreading alarm and despondency, with no possibility of timely response to a similar audience because "comments on this article have now closed".
Don't compare a disagreement here with anything Juco says, for example.
I think we ended up going down quite a long rabbit hole McFlock, and I'm not quite sure why.
My initial comment was in response to Tony who took issues with lefties being critical. The old view that if don't support us on everything, you must be a Nat. Bat shit crazy thinking.
Anyway have a good day.
I took it as meaning not all criticism of the government's covid response is fair, constructive, accurate, useful, or particularly warranted given the state of the rest of the world.
In fact, most of it is "none of the above". It doesn't matter who is doing the backseat driving, if it's "none of the above" then they're doing nothing other than distracting the driver.
The team's Covid journey has been relatively good so far. Hoping against hope that we don't soon find out just how 'lucky' we’ve been.
The Government is doing well with Covid. Not so great in most other measures. "The Nats would be worse" is a very low bar.
Child Poverty
Inflation/ Cost of Living
Housing Crisis
Climate Change
Aye
Not so great is an understatement…housing affordability and emergency accommodation fit in disastrous category.
Agree, Tony V.
As for voting NAct…to paraphrase Noam Chomsky – the good thing about choosing the lesser evil, is you get less evil. I won't be voting NAct!!
It's interesting hearing from so-called commentators about "rights" when in comes to covid restrictions and requirements. Yet it's difficult to see where these "rights" come from. The Human Rights Act lists 13 grounds of discrimination. I can't see which one or more of these could be relied upon to trump anything the government might do in the way of requirements around safety in respect to the potential spread of covid. Nor can the NZBORA provide anything similar. In any case it only applies to things done by the government or Crown-related outfits, and then only in relation to their statutory functions. It's telling that Russell McVeigh, one of the largest law firms in the country, has announced it's policy of requiring everyone visiting their offices to be vaccinated, including all staff. Surely if anyone's risk-analysis of such a requirement was going to stand up to a HRA or NZBORA critique it'd be theirs.
https://www.nzherald.co.nz/business/russell-mcveagh-and-pwc-announce-all-staff-and-visitors-to-its-offices-required-to-be-covid-19-vaccinated/PAZNT4I6WSZ6HPA4TTIEXUGJHE/
In terms of the NZBORA and Covid restrictions, it would be the rights to refuse medical treatment, freedom of movement, association and peaceful assembly. I think the restrictions come under justified limitations (also in the NZBORA) myself and that has been the findings of courts to date, but obviously others have a differing view.
Yes, I'm sure Russell McVeigh's position would be that the restrictions are justified limitations. I'm not so sure about the right to refuse medical treatment, though. I'd say the right is still intact because people can still refuse vaccination.
Currently, but if you're a nurse or teacher (for example), NZ work might be hard to find after the order comes through, which could be seen as compulsion. Agree that it's more tenuous than hired goons actually forcing the vaccination.
Haven't really noticed this bit.
"but then suggest they’ll give their vote to the Natz? Or worse still, Act??"
And many of us lefties aren't Labour supporters either. although I do think they have done a very good job of managing the pandemic until they opened the Oz bubble. Since then they have been putting out fires.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HPjPpTSznK4
As a traveller stuck in QLD I suggest the following with regard to travel back to the motherland:
What I would want to ask the Minister is how could a competent Minister let this disastrous state of affairs continue and the debacle that is MIQ, operate for so long with absolutely no leadership on this issue.
Nope.
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-02261-8
The vaccines are tools to help limit spread and reduce risk to individuals. They're not a panacea. The helping limit spread thing needs multiple tools, including controls on borders, periodic lockdowns, MiQ, mask wearing, hand washing, distancing etc.
Tony, I just ask the complainers exactly how many mates and matesses they were prepared to bury in the last 18 months. There is no comfortable reply.
And Dennis, maybe you haven’t been listening but it is emphasised every time Ardern et al has been asked, transmission has NOT been happening at work, shopping or out walking but at indoor mixing amongst family and friends groups. That’s what the contact tracers do.
indoor mixing amongst family and friends
Thanks Adrian – it's true that I don't watch those govt pr events, I just go by media reportage & commentary here.
So based on the above logic, Tamaki was right. Did the govt admit that?? And what exactly has the amendment of levels done to control that indoor mixing? The scenario you point to suggests to me that public health policy fails to solve the problem.
Tamaki was right about what?
Pretty hard to use public health policy to solve overcrowded housing in the short term.
Irony. His apparent assumption that mass gatherings outside are okay. If delta isn't detectably spreading in them – which is what Adrian's reporting of Ardern's messaging suggests – then he was right in his assumption.
Tamaki wasn't ok. Small outside gatherings are less risky, not free of risk. That's why there are still rules for outside gatherings. Tamaki's mass event broke pretty much all of those rules.
Nope.
He was lucky, so far.
If any cases get connected to an event he held, I hope he gets done for something in the order of negligence or some other reckless-endangering-causing-injury offense.
That was him thumbing his nose. His ant-vax sentiments are dangerous, Apostle #@*-$ believes his rubbish and spreads it. He is a parasite who may
through that kill the host.
About as many as pass from preventable causes would be my answer:
https://www.health.govt.nz/our-work/populations/maori-health/tatau-kahukura-maori-health-statistics/nga-mana-hauora-tutohu-health-status-indicators/major-causes-death
Let adults make decisions based on the information given and reopen
how exactly do adults choose to not get covid?
what are the projected long covid rates? Who is going to look after those people?
The information is out there, what you choose to do with it is your business and the consequences of your decisions are yours as well
Vaccinate or don't, isolate as much as possible or don't, mask up or don't
Thats how it should be.
You choose to be obese you suffer the consequences of your actions, you choose to have sex without a condom you suffer the consequences etc etc
"you choose to have sex without a condom you suffer the consequences"
That pretty much sums up your and other right wing wanky attitudes.
Most people delight in the consequences and we should be working to make that a good outcome for all people and all children so no-one would have to suffer.
Reminder in the 70's 40% of children were born out of wedlock and 40% within 9 months of getting married.
The right wing – trying to make reality in their own self-indulgent image since forever.
Not right wing, conservative.
"you choose to have sex without a condom you suffer the consequences"
I was using unprotected sex in the context of covid.
Don't want to get an STD use a condom, don't use a condom suffer the consequences (including up to death)
Your choice
"70's 40% of children were born out of wedlock".
I don't believe you. Can you provide a source for this claim. I can offer you the following. In the middle of the 70s it gives the percentage of births out of wedlock as being about 16%. This rose to more like 50% in recent years.
https://teara.govt.nz/en/graph/30221/ex-nuptial-births-1964-2017
I think it is you who is trying to make reality out of your imagination.
"Reminder in the 70's 40% of children were born out of wedlock and 40% within 9 months of getting married."
Got a source for that claim?
I'll try and find it again. It is in relation to teenage parents in NZ which I didn't make clear. The info has been around for a while.
How does that work for people who have illnesses that increase their risk of catching covid and increase the risk of very poor outcomes, and who will have to share spaces with the the people who don't vaccinate?
The outcomes for them don't sound conservative at all, in fact they sound pretty radical.
The same as it works for the flu every year around 500 per year: https://www.otago.ac.nz/otagomagazine/issue45/inbrief/otago664450.html#:~:text=Research%20by%20the%20University%20of,biggest%20single%20infectious%20disease%20killer.
Get vaccinated, wear a mask, self-isolate as much as possible or don't. The information is out there.
The flu is a seasonal illness. The Flu vaccine prevents the flu. The flu, even without the vaccine is less likely to be transmitted than covid, less likely to cause death and less likely to fill up our hospitals.
Covid is an all year illness. Rather than fully preventing the disease, the Covid vaccine more accurately reduces the spread of the disease and the impact of covid for people – not necessarily for those unfortunates "underlying conditions"
My mind is struggling to envisage how you think that would work withing the structure of a family – maybe sen the unfortunates off to some form of MIQ? It's still sounding pretty radical to me.
Depending on the location of the country, it appears the seasons might be a factor:
https://eos.org/research-spotlights/scientists-uncover-the-seasonality-of-covid-19
That's reaching a bit for relevance PR.
They think maybe Covid is seasonal, but they don't quite know how, def less seasonal in the tropics, maybe in countries with cold winters … Southland might be ok in the summertime ay?
Look, I know you were banned for a year and weren't here for most of the pandemic, but these are old and boring talking points.
Covid =/= flu.
I know the kung flu is worse than the flu, thats why I'm vaccinated against kung flu but I don't get the flu vaccine
Don't know if I am the only one but I am getting a bit sick of kung flu, China flu & the like. These and like names were Trumpian ways of either downplaying the effects of the virus or smearing countries. Now he is gone it is a blessed relief not to be hearing them again……until the last few days.
PR is there some reason why you are following this pattern of dismissing the virus by not calling it by its correct name.
The name of the virus is Covid 19.
Maybe I don't like the way China's influence has spread so far that calling it where it came from is apparently bad
It's good enough for Ross River Fever, Ebola, MERS, Japanese Encephalitis etc etc
But let's no insult our new overlords eh
A difference is that the flu is hard to vaccinate against while Delta isn't. Delta is approximately as bad as Polio on the numbers (similar R0, slightly faster serial interval, similar-higher death rate), and is quite a bit worse than the flu.
The flu is not hard to vaccinate against. Thousands get a vaccine each year that is tweaked for NZ by assessing the dominant strains in the Northern hemisphere.
Many people have had a longer exposure and thus immunities to the flu strains. Vaccines are advised for those who would be at risk if they develop influenza. It is not a matter of hard to develop but of need to have.
Hard to vaccinate against in the sense that flu is caused by collection of viruses which mutate a lot and sometimes the vaccines miss a circulating strain, and effectiveness against hospitalisation is not nearly as high as for Delta (Min Health website has it at 61% for adults 18-64 and similar numbers for other groups reported).
Personal responsibility so don't send your under 12 yr old children to school.
The Condom equivalency only a dickhead would make an analogy like that.
"No person is an island" etc, which is why we have social welfare, social health, social housing. The right wing view is so SIMPLISTIC!
As I posted elsewhere I'm not right wing, I'm conservative. I believe in capitalism with a wide social safety net.
Unlike others on here I wouldn't turn the unvaccinated away from hospitals either
Conservative? That famously left-wing sector? Respect!
Word up my brother
Dictionaries are ever so 19th century. Just explain that the net is wide enough to include businesses, he'll get it. He likely knows right-wing doctrine says that govt bail-outs are anathema to a market-driven ideologue.
Problem is, we have marginalised, impoverished, abused and undervalued broad swathes of society for decades. To expect everyone to suddenly make informed and enlightened decisions (or not be in a gang or whatever) isn't realistic. It takes consistent prosocial and supportive policies to create a cohesive, healthy and cooperative community. Neoliberal austerity and the worship of wealth has predictable negative outcomes which are not undone overnight.
100%
Maybe, but the main risk factor for Covid by a wide margin is age. You live longer, you suffer the consequences?
Good on them for living that long, they've had a better life than those that die young.
Or continue with self-isolating, mask wearing safety measures we're already doing.
They don't have to stop if the levels change.
I think you (CH) should be looking at the MOH demographics that I posted earlier.
https://www.health.govt.nz/our-work/diseases-and-conditions/covid-19-novel-coronavirus/covid-19-data-and-statistics/covid-19-case-demographics
Although age was linked with poorer outcomes in the outbreak last year this does not seem, to me, to be as strong with Delta.
The main risk factor for Covid is being unvaccinated. As Biden says it is a 'pandemic of the unvaccinated'. The NZ figures show a significant number of children who are not yet eligible for a vaccine are getting Covid
I am concerned that the 'old age' and 'elderly' trope is (still) being used currently and the net effect is to mislead people as to the seriousness of Delta for younger age groups. Of course, the younger you are the longer you may potentially suffer from the effects of Long Covid.
If there are too many affected then their future and the country's future does not look rosy.
Yes in UK it became the socially active 20+ who were the spreaders. Delta magnified that.
you really don't seem to have a grasp of what public health is. Or the collective nature of a pandemic.
Or maybe you do but your ideology is every man for himself?
Theres only so much of our freedoms I'm willing to lose to a pandemic.
sure, but it's trade off right? It's not like we get to go back to how things were before. So which freedoms should we give up in order to not have lockdowns? (or have less of them)
At the point there are enough vaccines for the population and a reasonable amount of saliva testing kits (with an automatic resupply) we can open up.
Make it mandatory that you can prove you're wuhan flu free before you get on a flight to NZ (or you don't get on at all) and get tested again when you land (positive test = equals getting on the next plane back from where you cam from)
how can someone prove they're covid free before getting on a flight? If they get a test 2 days before, that's 2 days in which they can get infected and the lag between infection and infection being detectable is longer than a plane flight.
Everything we are doing is fallible, so we're talking about risk and harm minimisation. Hence my question about what restrictions do you want to trade for greater freedom.
(and putting people with covid on a plane is a sure way to infect others. All sorts of worker rights issues there in addition to public health ones).
First off we cannot keep the China Flu out of NZ indefinitely because we cannot stay in lockdown forever
So the argument isn't if we should open up (because we all know we'll have to eventually) its when we open up
But in answer to your question I do not want people to be forced to have vaccinations, thats a helluva slippery slope we don't want to be on
What does open up mean exactly?
Yeah! Draw the line, Pucky! You've got rights! Right?
A pretty decent left as well if you keep annoying me
Well people who care more about freedom than safety in a pandemic may lose everything. It is a balance.
Sure but at what point do we stop severely disadvantaging children to protect the elderly, like climate change they are the cohort which will carry the consequences in the future. .. Social Isolation, Educational deficit all have very long term consequences
So does death.
any argument that says kids vs elderly is on shaky ground right from the start. We need to envisions solutions that uphold the mana and wellbeing of all groups of people.
At the moment kids in Auckland are paying a disproportionately high price, not hearing much from govt about how they plan to alleviate that…
Online school isnt great to begin with and then there's a bunch of access issues for many with regards internet and devices etc. I had to buy an extra laptop so we could work from home and access school. All this shit is being glossed over its a big problem.
and in the UK they used covid do not resuscitate against disabled people without their permission.
We need to protect all classes of people. Kids, elderly, everyone.
Thats horrific, any good articles you could point me to?
-You're protecting doctors and nurses from burn out
-You're protecting people who may need emergency care but won't be able to get it because of beds blocked by covid patients
-You're also protecting thousands of kids mums and dads who have compromised immune systems, not just the kids' grandparents (we've been told just today that 2 doses isn't protective enough for these people)
-who knows if delta gets away on us that it won't mutate again and affect more children? Delta itself is more dangerous for younger age groups than the original Covid-19
Absolutely, if this goes on for longer we need to pay attention to how we'll work with social isolation and education to ensure kids get some benefits from this. But kids' concerns aren't necessarily that different from adults . For some, spending time with family, having time to explore and try new things, not spending hours being driven to school, activities etc. are positive. They know enough that allowing grannie and gramps to die from a disease that they feel they could have done something to prevent could be even more traumatising than missing a few months school (cross fingers that's all it is for Auckland kids).
Of course, it can't last forever. But as you imply with climate change, a new normal has to be found. This pandemic could be a stepping stone to a better future if we stopped dreaming about an imperfect past and found a way to move forward in a way that's better for kids and the planet.
The consequence of your decision may be yours but they are not yours alone. With covid-19, a person's bad choices effects everyone they pass the disease to. The disease can pass to people even when they take all the right precautions and even when they have never physically met or even seen each other.
Unfortunately, many people suffer the consequences of having sex without a condom when it was never their choice to have sex at all.
What has happened to Kiwi reporter Charlotte Bellis?
5 days ago. Stuff.co.nz published a headline story
Instead of a report to back up this headline, Stuff.co.nz published this message;
"This story has been removed by Stuff while we seek to undertake additional reporting."
Since then, nothing.
https://themuslimtimes.info/2021/09/09/journalist-charlotte-bellis-on-that-taliban-press-conference-life-in-afghanistan-and-why-being-a-kiwi-helps-her-feel-safe/
That is weird.
I heard her interviewed a short while ago – she was very good.
Spare a thought for the tribulations of kiwi aristocracy – it's tough at the top:
https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/300433025/my-heart-is-broken-major-family-snub-at-larnach-castles-150th-birthday-event
The Barker family started with next to nothing when they bought this badly run down castle .I was one of the first to go through the castle in 1967 when the Barkers first opened the castle 50cents for a tour the money going to its restoration.
43 rooms is a gross misrepresentation it is only a very small castle about 12 rooms the other rooms are motel rooms added later.Sophie is a very nice person .Always trying to do her best to make Dunedin a better place.
Is this the politics of envy or the politics of pettiness?
both?
http://memegenerator.net/instance/55918967/why-not-zoidberg-why-not-both
neither, it's Stuff reporting on a family feud that really has no public interest that would warrant a whole article.
It is a shame, they did a lot of good, hard work getting the castle up to scratch
nah dude – wrong end of the stick, there.
It wasn't quite a Cargill's Castle-level ruin when the family moved in, but they sure took a proerty that was falling apart and made it one of Dunedin's prime landmarks. Back when that was still possible without millions in the back pocket.
The spectre of creeping Stalinism:
What are they trying to hide?
Could be. More likely its simply the general impression of cluelessness that the leftist Greenies who control the party are embedding in the public mind. James soldiers on resolutely in advancing his govt portfolio agenda. Marama does what exactly? Hard to tell. There seems a total lack of Green leadership emanating from the GP.
Perhaps it is all with The Greens, or maybe the media and it's style if reporting has something to do with it
As an example, Checkpoint on RNZ, seems to be looking for the outrage.
The government draws a line for a border near Auckland and they interview someone on the 'wrong' side of the border. Government announces residency/citizenship (i forgot which) to migrants working and they interview the one who has left hospo and gone studying ECE, therefore inelligible.
TBF the Greens support for BDMR/ Gender Self ID, is causing dissent too.
It depends on how one sees the function of a conference. The formulation and discussion of truly new policy is sensitive and involves false starts and disagreements. However much our cynical media might like to harvest that for clickbait, doing so does no service to the party, nor to the causes it was created to further.
Bomber, like Trotter, hates the Greens.
Love/hate? He often reminds us he's a Green voter. Tbf, the dichotomy between the Green movement & the Green Party will always loom in the psyche of those of us motivated by the difference between what is & what ought to be…
It's not looming in the psyche of 94% of New Zealand.
Hard to imagine in 2020 the Greens and Act were level.
The unrelieved media adoration of ACT, in the absence of an even remotely plausible National, has done wonders for ACT's polling. The same sugar hit would have done as much for the Greens, had it occurred.
Still, Green schools and revisionist rainbow Mexicans will only take one so far – when the environment takes a back seat, its supporters lose interest in the remains of the party.
6% is not a safe place for the Greens.
They tend to see it as bedrock, eh? Building on bedrock is sensible. Too bad they continue to shirk the task of doing the actual building.
Since I'm the one who showed them how to make consensus politics work 30 years ago, I always wonder what part of extending consensus is ever so hard for these turkeys to grasp.
There is a place below 6% for the Greens to exist.
It's where Swarbrick retains Auckland Central and the Greens coat-tail 3 more MPs in.
A total of 4 Green MPs would not ensure that Labour is returned to power.
Labour have held their end up really well since 2017, but the Green Party are just a failure.
Unless the Greens stop being shit we will have a National-Act coalition in 2023.
Good point. I expect Ardern to win through this period of difficulty though. It's not as if Nat/Act seems a viable alternative to anyone with half a brain.
Your logic does work on the basis of sheeple psychology, however. Depends how ephemeral the drift back across the center line really is. Trouble with polls is that they merely indicate mass sentiment at the time.
There us also the chance that we'll end up through the worst of Covid and well into the coming financial maelstrom which could well see the tide shift very quickly as soft Labour voters switch back.
If the Nats put up a freindly face as leader wont take much…
Good point. That looming economic storm currently on the media horizon could come our way too eventually, but seems likely to break in China first. Globalised markets could provide a tsunami sloshing around for a while.
Not could, it will… inflation isnt going away for a start price increases are coming through daily, so the RB starts shifting interest rates which will be a hit on floating rates but once fixed term mortgages etc are reset will suck big chunk of disposable income from the economy to service the debt… that and people will stop using their home equity to spend so a pretty stiff belt tightening which will set off a chain reaction that will be very hard to do much about…. and if shit hits the fan overseas first we'll feel it pretty quick.
We’re already seeing market distortions that are pretty decent indicators of incoming problems… bit like Angora goats and Deer… except its more tied up in housing, art and collectibles like of all kinds look at NFTs or whatever theyre called.
Called even add billionaire space race to that list…
Stop gaslighting the Greens.
John Key's National was able to govern with support partners supplying less than 7 seats – so why not Labour with say 4 Greens and 3 MP?
The Greens polled better than the polls predicted at the last election.
This government is Labour-no Greens are around the cabinet table. This parliamentary term has been dominated by the Covid response. This gives the Greens' ideas very little oxygen.
In 2 years time at the election all this will look different. NZ will have 3000 Covid cases a day and 12 deaths, but this will be the accepted reality and it will hit Labour in the polls.
The Greens' ideas will come through in the election campaign and they will poll 8-10% as climate change comes through as a key issue. Swarbrick will hold Akl Central, but the Greens won't need it to be in parliament and become part of a new coalition with Labour, but this time around the cabinet table.
BG you say "The Greens' ideas will come through in the election campaign and they will poll 8-10% as climate change comes through as a key issue."
I fear that is wishful thinking going by the Greens performance in this term. Their mojo is missing and they seem to be forever side-tracked into woke issues. I watch with dread as their support tumbles. It appears that somethings have become unstuck in their management and discipline because their embarrassing gaffs can't be solely blamed on the media gotcha moments.
please fix username on next comment, ta.
People have been writing the Greens off for all 25 years of MMP……they have never failed to get elected.
Cassetteboy tells it like it is in the UK.
This link?
https://youtu.be/PLITXTXBS1s
Yes – sorry about that – Youtube seems awfully keen to push that other thing at me for some reason.
Dennis, watching the 1 or 4 pms is a way of getting the direct info not stuff that has been filtered through the reckons of the likes of Malpas and Cooke and Cheng and Tova. They have a tendency to leave out the reasonings and clarifications.
Yes that is why I watch them too. I turn off at question time so I don't have to listen to the opinionated, and gotchas from the media. If I want to catch up on these I look at the written feeds that s come through at the same time as the questions.
You can always watch the live version at a time to suit.
I watch the q&a as the Tova/Jason etc show their hands with multiple gotcha attempts often on the same issue.
JA has shown incredible patience with what passes for media in this country.
Agree with this.
Still not keen to watch the questions again after spending many half an hours of my life during the first outbreak going 'OMG', 'are you for real', 'she's just said that………'
The only bright light was the questions from a reporter from one of the Maori media outlets, but to wait for his questions, which are usually on point and actually useful/helpful/in depth (judging from the responses he gets from those he is asking questions) means I have to listen to an 'awful lots of frogs'. The old joke about finding the handsome prince and how you have to kiss an awful lot of frogs in the process.
Absolutely Adrian. Get it from the source not a bloody tributary with a filter!!
Auckland wants a target or a number? Some certainty. Some direction. The magic number to 'open up' or go to L2 ? It looks like Covid is spreading right across all of Auckland. Those numbers are not going to come. At some point the decision will be made using the dartboard system, blindfolded. The dartboard will be a calendar.
How about a target like Level 1 on the 1st of December for the whole country. That gives everyone a chance to get their first jab this week and 3-4 weeks later their second jab.
Because the recalcitrants won't and the target won't be reached and raised hopes will be dashed.
A little surprised new case numbers aren't bigger. Contact tracers must be working overtime. Expecting case numbers to explode soon and 'open up' targets will be distant dream. The mutinous mobs will be blissfully ignorant.
An important figure though is the number of unlinked cases. This is a key as well as actual daily numbers.
In reality theyre much bigger, key is to look at test numbers, we're finding more cases with a fraction of the tests…
But why should the recalcitrants hold back the rest of Auckland and for how long? If Auckland's vaccination rate is say, 87% on the 21st of December, do we remain in level three for a further two weeks/month over new years?
Probably, even at that rate the hospitals couldn't cope with demand. Everyone mingles over Christmas so it's a recipe for disaster.
Jimmy wasn't saying that recalcitrants would get vaccinated Robert. He was saying that would have had the chance to do so. If they haven't done so that is their choice. It doesn't mean that the rest of New Zealand should have to remain in confinement just because a bunch of idiots refuse to take protective measures.
There are a few people in New Zealand who cannot safely have a Pfizer vaccination. IIRC I heard Bloonfield say a couple of weeks ago that it was less than 100. I don't have a source though and I may have misheard it. However, cruel as it might sound I don't believe that we can remain shutdown for them. For those who can be vaccinated but won't they are going to have to take their chances.
We know the recalcitrants won't though, don't we Alwyn, so we'll consign them to the scrap-heap/ICU? They could pull themselves up by their boot-straps, right? Ayn Rand has a lot to answer for and I guess that's a weigh-heart-against-feather sort of issue. Gonna be ugly!
I prefer to think of all the people now overseas who can't exercise their right to return to their own country.
Or the people now here who cannot travel overseas to see a parent before the parent dies. They can't go because they can't get a place in the MIQ jungle when they try and return.
Or the people who can't get an elective operation and struggle on with the pain of a hip that needs replacing but which they cannot be operated on because the beds have to be saved for the selfish people who don't get vaccinated and therefore will get a much more serious and long lasting hospital stay for their Covid.
Or the people whose business, and all the work they did to build it, is being dumped on the scrapheap because they are locked down to protect the bums who won't make any attempt to protect their own health.
Or the hundred billion or so dollars that is being wasted because the Government would rather pay out benefits than let people work. And the young people who are going to have to pay off the borrowing in the future.
But they don't matter do they? Far better to allow a few people to refuse a vaccination that will protect them and make every socially minded person suffer for the few's selfishness.
Had any vaccinations yourself Robert?
I know people who are vaccinated who would die if they catch covid-19. Them being vaccinated is not for their own safety but to improve the safety of those who may come into contact with them.
Those NZers matter too.
How about letting my double vaxed Swiss national best mate of the last 17 yrs , my essential worker, my financial partner, back in NZ along with the kiwis for Xmas. Our farm is a perfect MIQ and I have been double vaxed since mid August. The work is piling up and the farm projects have been on hold for 18 mths now. I am not a superwoman, just a 73 yr old woman holding the fort.
Oz has moved to allow their citizens to return (first NSW and Victoria) to home isolation. Other states as their vax rates get up and they allow inter-state activity. We'll do Auckland first.
Their PM said no to foreign tourists in the meantime.
This does raise the issue about use of the managed isolation for incoming workers (or worker placement to onsite work places – orchards/vineyards and farms) before tourism.
He does not come as a "foreign tourist" He is as important to me and the farm as "Kiwis coming home for Xmas" are to their families and he will stay much longer than most of them.
Did I say he came as a foreign tourist?
Managed isolation facilities (hotels) are usually used by tourists – they are currently used for returning citizens and under a quota some workers.
But some workers (for example, later this year PI seasonal workers) are isolating where they will live while working.
So while there will soon be more spots for incoming workers in these hotels, some are already being allowed to isolate where they will live and work – such as on a farm.
You should seek advice about the process for bringing in a farm worker – if the person qualified then they would either come in through the hotel MI system or to the farm.
Yes thank you for your advice. I have already been down the Humanitarian road but declined due to the fact, I think, that we are not a married couple! ( Who would want to get married again at our age!) ) No the PM is saying no to foreign tourists. The way it is going , I think I will have to take my situation to my MP because we are going to miss another summer season – of long planned development work on the farm- some of it waiting half finished for 18mths.
and, by the way, seasonal workers coming into Switzerland from other parts of Europe have been isolating for two weeks at their places of work for about 6 months now.
Bless hope he gets an MIQ, which is harder as spots are taken by the sick.
First he has to get a visa …. Switzerland used to be Visa waiver country but not right now. NZ Immigration have already declined granting him visa after he applied recently.
They won't go back to Level 1 nationwide (they have sort of ruled out going back to either Level 1 or Level 4 – unless they really have to).
It'll be a move to the traffic light system in 2022.
The hope would be Level 2 in Auckland by 1 December, the reality will more likely a move from Level 3 lite (now) to Level 3 lighter, then to Level 3 lightest and onto Level 2 later in December.
The border might remain, albeit allowing those with vaccination passports to come and go (making it difficult to come in and then leave without a certificate).
OK. So the response for anyone who doesn't get vaccinated is "let 'em die".
What about vaxxed folk who need medical attention but the unvaxxed spread it to enough vaxxed people that all the beds are full even if we throw the unvaxxed straight in the bin?
Is that worth a fucking haircut?
If your Auckland business happens to be a hairdresser, then "Yes, it is worth a fucking haircut!"
So the response to the million or so that have been vaccinated is "Sorry, no travel out of Auckland for you as we have a few people that don't want the vaccination. Sorry about Labour weekend, Halloween and Christmas and new years….there's always next year" It's like a teacher making the whole class stay late due to one naughty child.
Yes. We all know capital alienates us to the point we would rather people die than our business go under.
But you're not supposed to say that bit out loud.
Get them all double jabbed then if they don't want to die. It is their choice.
Such a shame that the tory brain can't compute that some of the people dying will have had their vaccinations but just be in the unlucky 10%.
The cult of individual responsibility refuses to believe that our individual choices might have repercussions upon others that can't be mitigated by their individual choices.
So friggin' true.
There is no evidence the mortality rate is 10%.
but fuck actual facts when you want to hate Tories right?
lockdown fanbois obviously don’t get the situation on the ground. As outlined way above in this post, the problem is south auckland. Lock that down and hard. Let the good people north and west who’ve had the jab get on with life. Kids at school developing. Adults letting their kids see their grandparents.
fuckfaces like you forget the human side of this pandemic in your quest to eliminate (not eradicate)
I didn't say 10% will die.
I said that some of the people who die will be in the group of people who got vaccinated but it was less effective for them.
100% – 90% effective = 10%.
None of the 90% will die, because the vaccine will be effective for them.
Clear enough?
Lockdown stress sucks. So does the stress of having friends and loved ones die, or long-term disabled (remember long covid?). Your experience isn't the entirety of the human cost of this pandemic.
If I thought I had read and heard the range of silly or ill-informed comments about Covid vaccines, new ones keep emerging. Pembroke Bird came out with this gem explaining why he and others won't get the Pfizer jab
What vaccines do you think the US has used? That's right, overwhelmingly Pfizer and Moderna,both exactly the same technology as we have available here. To a far lesser extent the Janssen vaccine, which is good but not as effective as the other 2.
How about Israel? Yup, same as the US. Pfizer and Moderna. Now giving a third shot of either to the more fragile.
So lets talk about Africa. That continent is desperate to get whatever it can. Egypt is leaning heavily on the Sinovac vaccine, which whilst it is decent at keeping you alive and suffering the worst effects of covid, isn't a stellar performer. South Africa has relied on the Janssen vaccine, Many other countries have no choice other than to take what they get – AstraZeneca, Sinovac, Sinopharm, whatever gets delivered.
Maybe that's the option Pem Bird says he is choosing, the wait and see what gets delivered into his letterbox, vaccine surprise, whilst hoping covid doesn't get to him first.
That's the Murupara Kaumatua line …
Moderna 2 doses provides the longest high level of antibodies (Pfizers immunity fades a little earlier). Of those in the UK, Pfizer two doses provides the most antibodies, but it's the AZ Pfizer combo that provides the most T cell response.
yup that's the Murupara Kaumatua's line
We don't want to take Pfizer, we want the same vaccines successfully used in the US and Israel, that being Pfizer
We also want the same vaccines available in Africa, being anything they can get hold of
This guy runs a school, Principal of a Wharekura.
Just had a conversation with an ECE teacher in L2 and are fully vaccinated. 5 staff are away due to a virus and coughing. The person cannot go to work due to coughing.
I asked has anyone had a Covid test?
A person has to stay home until the test result is known.
No sick leave entitlement yet.
I then said, you need to find out if the government will cover your wages while waiting for a Covid test result. Also you would not want to be known as the teacher who exposed Covid to the under 5 year olds if you were positive for Covid.
People who work with children cannot ignore the possibility of being exposed to Covid. Some ECE teachers also have young children or primary school age children.
When schools reopen in Auckland some sort of mobile testing unit would be helpful to do the rounds at schools.
We need rapid saliva tests, and we need them fast.
My partner gets his brain tickled once a week just to be on the safe side as he travels a lot and has a huge territory. It wears thin after the 15th tickle, believe me.
Really what needs to happen is for people to start acting as if the virus was everywhere, as if everyone is at risk of infection at any time and behave accordingly, masking always, social distance always, keep bubbles small and managable, avoid big crowds (can we please stop the nonsense with big outdoor concerts for 22), and test test test.
Covid transmission cannot be taken for granted. In time I am hopeful that a better saliva test not requiring a lot of spit will be available and is as accurate as a PCR test. Needs to be affordable.
I am having to dodge a lot of discarded masks at the supermarket carpark and verge on the foot path. Lazy and inconsiderate people who dump them, I have seen them left in trollies. Mask disposal bins are required as masks are essential.
Mask disposal bins would be excellent. They should be handled/treated as bio hazard.
There are a saliva tests out there and they are used widely.
It would be in the best interest of all if we could each get these as easily as buying a pack of coldral in the supermarket. if and only if this test shows a positive then follow up with the brain tickle test. Not perfect, but better then nothing. I guess that having hte world be a testing tube for us is comfortable, but at some stage we also need to accept that these are the tools we have now, and while not perfect they still help.
Every home should have a home test kit before next winter – to distinguish between coronavirus and flu infection.
+1
Were a mask bin available it would need to be designed so people cannot retrieve the masks unless they are maintenance. Other bio waste is a risk as well, discarded cigarette butts. I also try and avoid stepping on spit.
Tell the protesting covid deniers and vaccine hesitant freedom mob.
i honestly don't care about them.
I personally do what i can to keep myself safe as far as that is possible with an essential worker at home. I simply live life as if the plague was here, and as if i could catch it at any moment. And maybe we all need to do that, rather then wait for someone else to do the right thing. Also please keep in mind that there will be still people who will not be able to vaccinate due to age or health restrictions.
But we can also just continue to cry about spilled beans.
Rapid test kits are on the way …
https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/the-detail/300433138/the-detail-what-is-antigen-rapid-testing-and-how-will-it-aid-aotearoas-covid-plan
Yes 300.000 of them to some select businesses. I want them in super markets at a cheap and affordable price. So again, nothing more then a trickle where we need a flood. But again, this too is better then nothing.
I agree – but yeah, it's a start.
The employer can claim $300 for each day an employee is waiting for a covid test result, I think
And Sabine – yes to your third para in particular.
OK, I need to read the details. It might just be for some levels.
Most ECE centres have a weekly meeting and the manager would need to inform the staff.
$359 one-off payment.
https://www.workandincome.govt.nz/covid-19/short-term-absence-payment/index.html
Thank you.
The rapid testing equip has been ordered and will be presumably be used by health and educational locations.
The more rapid test options the better.
When ever supervision/care of children is required, once the teacher/staff are away the ratio of required staff is an issue.
From the Guardian – What really counts? How the patriarchy of economics finally tore me apart | Economics | The Guardian
Great article, which includes reference to the ex-National MP for whom I have an immense amount of respect.
Good to see this. Onsite here several years ago I got surprising push-back when I pointed to the residual patriarchy. After the initial eye-roll about leftists being thick again, I figured that denial was a wall to bulldoze thro so I adopted the policy of repeating that pointing on every suitable occasion to wear the buggers down.
There's a female Green economist who has been part of the solution a hell of a long time: Hazel Henderson.
Ardern "We will tell you on Friday. I can't talk about it till our announcement of the plan on Friday"
Thanks for that. Most transparent govt ever.
They have obviously decided. Just fucking say. Businesses are dying
Still putting details together I should think. The virus rips up old plans almost as quickly as new one can be made.
Agreed – what's the use of targets plucked from people's backsides that provide an illusion of certainty but turn out to be wrong because circumstances change? Of course it would play beautifully into the Tova O'Brien school of confessional journalism – where every interviewee would confess their missed target and resign on the spot or disembowel themselves on-screen with a samurai sword.
The problem here is not really lack of plans, or communication or certainty. It's an economic system that leaves so many people precarious and therefore potentially devastated by any shock. Including minor capitalists who own small businesses.
"we need a plan! Target!"
"We will announce a plan/target this Friday"
"We want it now!"
& Yet the RW say the PM talks to them like a kindy teacher, maybe theRW still stop acting like kindy kids.
The corporation as a person.
A government risks death at each election.
It was suppose to be my day off on the Standard. Anyone else planning a circuit breaker and impulse getting the better of them? The number of comments on TS have been picking up.
Inflation at 4.9%, people will cut back on some of the treats. This will have an impact on business. Once the decision is made to pull the plug on the business or to keep talking to the bank, (fight or flight) other possibilities will be explored. Business people have a creative gene, they might need to step back, recuperate and then proceed.
The hard truth.
Have been saying that since last year. In fact it would be really really great if the good minds in government could come up with a way for people to close down shop without breaking commercial leases and being forced into bankruptcy and / or breaking existing laws. Many many businesses are still there simply for the leases they have signed well before Covid was even a thing.
yet here we are and nothing has come of it.
Having a business partner instead of a sole owner.
Lease agreements are a huge stress. Predicting the quartely revenue is hard, along comes Covid and not knowing if the business can operate fully, partially or not at all and for how long, is a lot upon ones shoulders.
Let's take the capitalist view CT.
If a business dies, then given the laws of the market economy another business will take its place. You will still be able to buy your coffee from the corner cafe, the restaurant will still serve yummy food, and your favourite menswear retailer may well stock a better range.
All preferable in my book to being dead.
No its not preferable
So you will take the socialist coin to keep your cafe going.
How is that supposed to work for a good capitalist like yourself. Doesn't the market rule? And if a pandemic is the result of the market, so be it.
Wrong.
1. The business failing due to lockdowns is the governments fault therefore the business is entitled to compensation to allow it to keep going.
2. I believe in capitalism with a wide social safety net.
3. The market rules but also needs rules (see above)
4. The pandemic appears to be more a result of China playing silly buggars
A government would be liable for the survival of a business during a pandemic if there had been payment of pandemic insurance by the company to the government.
Don't know about "silly buggars", but 'appearances' can be deceptive
Prisoner of the Right .
No insurance company will cover for Covid why should the govt.
So if we didn't have a lockdown we would have had a far worse outcome many Doctors and nurses dying on top of a huge death toll and a toll of long covid in the community predicted to affect 10 to 15% of the population .Damaging the economy longterm.
Pathetic Retaliation to Nationals poor Results in the polls.
Less is More Trolling 101.
Prisoner of the Right.
– Conservative
No insurance company will cover for Covid why should the govt.
– Because the government is responsible for the lock down
So if we didn't have a lockdown we would have had a far worse outcome many Doctors and nurses dying on top of a huge death toll and a toll of long covid in the community predicted to affect 10 to 15% of the population .Damaging the economy longterm.
– When did I say no lock down, I did say with all the information available, if theres enough time and vaccines for the population then yes we should open up.
Pathetic Retaliation to Nationals poor Results in the polls
– They are bad but I'm glad you've got that off your chest
Well it is actually the Pandemics fault.
No different from a war, earthquake or extra rain in winter.
As a general principle however, one of the reasons to pay taxes is for mutual insurance against mis-fortunes such as pandemics.
I.E. Socialism.
There is no Capitalist justification for bailing out businesses that cannot survive the "slings and arrows" etc. Despite the rather nonsensicle claim, that the Government is fiscally responsible to individual businesses, for taking necessary measures to keep the country viable during a pandemic.
I’m sure that the irony, of the same people that complain about paying taxes or “Government interference” now complainimg about not enough Government help, is obvious to most of us.
I have been thinking about what travel insurance is going to look like for Covid cover?
Patience…just three more sleeps, little one..
Some are dying, some have pivoted, some are growing.
Pre-lockdown there were 152,502 jobs in the accommodation and food sector. End of Maty 2021 151,303. Overall it has rebounded pretty well. The spread maybe uneven but overall it doesn't seem quite as bad as all the doom and gloom merchants suggest.
Overall jobs are up on pre=-lockdown. Building industry well up. Transport is in a worse state.
Anyway what is the right wing mantra – don't like it get a better job, adapt, pivot, be flexible, get qualified etc. Why is some pithiness not applicable now.
https://www.stats.govt.nz/experimental/covid-19-data-portal
I think this week they should announce the decisions they're going to make on December 1st. Based on circumstances now.
Then when they change their minds by December 1st because circumstances have changed, everyone can call them liars, say they're all over the shop with decision making and call them indecisive.
That's how it works doesn't it. Next years budget is going to be really important. Grant Robertson has probably made up his mind about some general approaches.
Why haven't we heard Lisa Owen on air haranguing Robertson, "Yes Minister, but if you have decisions now, why can't you tell us?" And some mention of transparency of course.
Yesterday's announcements Adern said their would be more economic aid for businesses but said that will be announced on Friday.
"The government has been working on a plan for days, why didn't they tell us this earlier"
"The government has told us a plan will be released in a few days and have indicated it's coming, why don't they tell us now"
Moans if they don't preface what is coming, moans if they do.
Outbursts based on frustration can be illogical and knee jerks reactions.
Chris T perhaps talking to the affected business parties?
Not being funny. But if Ardern knows there will be an announcement Friday, Why not just tell us what is likely to be?
Businesses are dying. A bit less tell you tuesday or friday would be a tad handy
You are a one! Thanks chris T for the best laugh of my day so far. What's the point of telling us what it's "likely to be", when it might turn out to be something else. Or do you want the PM to give odds?
A very funny comment from chris T @12.
Ever been told by a teenager "that's too much information" when you have tried to explain something important?
The PM has to reduce being cross examined due to time restraints. She has to know what her ministers are reporting as well, and has the responsibility of managing the country.
Good question, why do governments announce things on Friday?
https://politicaldictionary.com/words/friday-news-dump/
Nope no idea
It's a chance for the political pundits to share their/our wisdom over a weekend pint. A Friday night pint for the Week That Was, another for the Week To Be, one for the weekend footie and one more because that last tasted bloody good.
I don't think political pundits need an excuse but I get what you're saying
Why is the deadline for settlement / opportunity for bargains always 4:00pm Friday
They must have some really bad news to release. It isn't just a Friday. It is also the day before a long weekend. That makes it a double-dump-the-trash day of course.
Here is one of the things that is happening between now and Friday.
https://www.newshub.co.nz/home/politics/2021/10/covid-19-govt-consulting-hospitality-industry-on-introducing-vaccine-passports-ahead-of-friday-covid-19-plan-announcement-jacinda-ardern.html
Bearing in mind the pre-disposition of many of those in hospo to complain about anything and everything about the actions of the Govt from wages, to levels, to not enough time to get our sh*t together to talk to you, giving them time to feed back ideas, assess them and formulate policy around them this seems to be worth waiting for.
Also this.
https://www.newshub.co.nz/home/new-zealand/2021/10/covid-19-everyday-activities-won-t-be-available-to-the-unvaccinated-jacinda-ardern.html
Yet with all that she knows they can work it out by Friday
Actually cracks me right up. We can't say at his time!! We will tell you Friday.
If you know on Friday then just say now.
No! We definitely know we will have the answer but cant tell you till friday.
Why?
Because it needs to be Friday
So you are still thinking about the answer?
No Or we wouldn't know we can give it to your on Friday
If they can say say they will have a definitive answer Friday then they must know what it is now.
Or they wouldn't be able to say they know the answer Friday
This shit aint rocket science
Because at the start of the pandemic someone leaked that Lombardy was going to be locked down in 48 hours (they needed to mobilise and deploy folk to enforce it), so a whole bunch of infected Lombards went throughout Italy and Europe.
How did that work out??
RNZ News just now reporting on radio a bipartisan housing announcement: Megan Woods & Judith Collins, with associates. Excellent start down a new path…
Good ol' Jude, willing to put aside politics to do whats right for NZ
But on a more serious note, well done to both parties
The eternal optimist in me hopes this will herald in a new era of cooperation which will only be of benefit to NZ as a whole
The obvious losers are rabid partisans of the left & right. Consensus politics can be made to work: where there's a will, there's a way. This clever move proves that point!
oh look, Labour and National working together to funnel resources into developers who can work with less protections in place.
This isn't how you solve the housing crisis. This is how you rearrange some deck chairs.
thanks for saying that.
I was spitting nails when i read that. 3 story crappily build houses to appear everywhere and every one will just have to live with it!
but hey, who says that National and Labour can't find common ground. I am sure Grant boy is happy that hte govt real estate holdings will increases even further. Surplus! yei!
imagine increasing housing density during a pandemic that's getting out of control by people living close to each other.
I wonder if they can work together on greater guarantee of building standards being met, or at least some sort of accountability?
lol.
National the naysayers have turned a corner and for want of a better word more constructive.
Maybe they're thinking of their post-National career.
that's very hopeful of you.
While there's life, there's hope, as the old saying goes. This initiative embeds centrist political ethos in Aotearoa for the forseeable future. It may even improve JC's poll rating! Scepticism is reasonable, nonetheless, so it will be up to the Nat/Lab leaders to ensure that delivery matches rhetoric.
The realist in me thinks somewhat differently
Lifestyle block values will boom.
A great day for disaster capitalism – a lot of houses will be destroyed, to make way for the new (maybe rather than knock them down they should allow a pick up by those with some spare iwi land to provide for their homeless?).
maybe rather than knock them down they should allow a pick up by those with some spare iwi land to provide for their homeless?
Good thinking! I'd mandate that if I were the cabinet minister rolling out policy. Perhaps a prudent precaution would be around the costing of the home removal/relocation – a three-way split tween developer, buyer & taxpayer?
So much for our need to be more self sufficient in the future. I look at all these dog kennel units being built everywhere and wonder what the hell all the people locked up in them do. No wonder they're going stir crazy! I'd be lost without my garden, and proximity to a large reserve during these times of lockdown.
There's no planning for social infrastructure in this rush to ruin more and more sections and I can only foresee more cheap and nasty NZ ballsups.
I'm with you on that. Have the old quarter-acre first time in five house ownerships (sequentially) and am a keen gardener.
Chinese immigrants seem partial to shoebox apartments – probably due to it being the norm in their past. My final full-time job in Ak a decade ago was supervising the dressing for sale (homestaging) and I got to see how tiny they can be. Think that design got lodged in the heads of Ak planners & developers like a mental virus back in the '90s.
Sorry, but I think you are both wrong. The idea of the quarter-acre paradise was supreme while NZ's population was small enough, but those days are gone.
In the late 1970s -early 1980s I lived very happily in apartments in Cologne (West Germany) and Lyon (France). They were among the best years of my life; I never felt that I was living in an era of social decline, and was able to jog, take pleasant walks in parks/green zones as I wished. I kept fit and enjoyed a good life-style.
What you are now demanding as a birthright will condemn our over-populated country (controversial?) to years more of evil urban sprawl, eating up valuable agricultural land, creating future mayhem.
Sorry, but NZ needs to be dragged kicking and screaming into the 20th Century – or even the late 19th – when most other countries learned that house/garden, house/garden throughout the land was unsustainable.
If our population growth is to continue, our cities have to go upwards, not outwards. We just need to do it right. France and Germany did where I was back then.
What you are now demanding as a birthright
But we didn't make that demand. I've been citified all my life & have no issue with better urban design. Permaculture does that and I have a permaculture design certificate. However lots of folk prefer to be closer to nature if they can & I'm just fortunate enough late in life to enjoy having the old settler bit of both.
In Australia, the three level walk up apartments are common.
Single houses fill a whole block(section) and then you get stand alone smaller homes 3 to a block, another combination is 4 units in two sets, or six units in a walk up 1 whole floor of one half as an apartment. Then small and large high rises with 1 bedroom 2 bedroom 3 or 4 bedrooms. This gives a variety of types for purchase, and stock for rentals.
Our problem is the 4 bed and office 2/3 bathroom homes being built. They are out of reach of most. So variety is needed, near transport hubs.
" I look at all these dog kennel units being built everywhere and wonder what the hell all the people locked up in them do."
Depends how much accessible open space there is incorporated into the planning rules, and social mixing in public housing, and public transport
Can we do this please, rather than putting houses and roads over good farmland and regenerating bush?
Exactly. 20 years ago we bought a two bedroom unit 1 of 2 on a cross lease. Friends thought we were mad at the time. We own it do not have a body corp and they are all paying mega bucks to move into retirement villages, and a hefty weekly fee.
And now for something completely different.
This morning at Mataharehare, contractors arrived to begin work on the proposed National Erebus Monument. After a stand-off with protestors and police, the contractors left.
The Ministry of Arts and Culture are pressing ahead with this project despite widespread public opposition, opposition from local mana whenua and many of the Erebus families, a rahui having been placed on the site, and an active Ombudsman's investigation. The Ombudsman has written to the Ministry asking them to cease work until his investigation has been finalised. They have refused.
Dame Naida Glavish has published her communication with the PM, the Ministry of Arts and Culture and various other local and central government bodies on this issue, setting out the alleged misrepresentation and inadequate consultation around this issue. For anyone concerned about democracy her communications are a chilling read.
it's like we never learn.
How much money has been spent on the project already? I bet that's part of why the government won't back down.
Here's an insight into the proposed works, from Dame Naida:
"The Ministry proposes 534sqm of earthworks on the Pā s a d clud g directly to the
north of the Tupuna Pōhu u awa ha s as old as Te Tiriti o Waitangi. It proposes to insert tonnes of concrete and steel directly in front of this great Rakau and into its roots that reach down toward te Waitematā."
Unfortunately, this is firmly at the feet of the PM. She made a promise to "a couple of" Erebus families that the memorial would be sited at that location. Apparently she now can't/won't back down.
A Kiwi PM that won't back down eh – extraordinary.
Mind you, NZ's political history is littered with PMs not backing down; think Key (public asset sales and the flag referendum), Key/Clark (unpopular anti-smacking legislation), Clark (foreshore and seabed), Bolger and Ruthanasia, Lange (anti-nuclear stance), Muldoon (pro-tour; at least we know where he stood), Kirk (cancelled the 1973 Springbok tour and opposed nuclear testing in the Pacific) et al.
There is nothing in this that reflects well on the PM, no matter how you spin it. She's made a promise she had no right to make, and a significant Auckland landmark is going to be detrimentally affected as a result.
A revealing comment. Not that I’m surprised at the target of "And now for something completely different" @15 – why would I be?
Your 'concern’ is noted – keep chipping away.
“A revealing comment.”
Only in response to your attempt to paint this as something noble. My first comment didn’t attach any criticism to the PM. In fact it’s possible that initially she was simply ill informed, but now she’s digging in, and that’s not reflecting well on her.
Bollocks. I listed several examples of former PMs not backing down; some “noble” and some not, imho.
Really?
As I said, your 'concern' is noted – keep digging for those "nothing in this that reflects well on the PM" stories, and mind the dirt.
Dame Naida Glavish Ready To Fight [29 Sept 2021]
“Really?”
How is my comment a criticism of the PM? The PM was Minister of Arts and Culture when this got underway. Dame Naida’s communications are critical of processes undertaken by that ministry specifically. Have you read them? Do you think those processes are ok?
As far as not reflecting well on the PM, that is evident. She made promises to a very small number of families that overrode the wishes of the majority, that defied the advice of the governments own commissioned report, and that defied the survey of families conducted to assess a location. As I said, she may have been misinformed at the time. But now that all of the misinformation and poor process has been uncovered, she has an opportunity to put this right.
When you wrote (in consecutive sentences @15):
and
I joined the dots and thought you were suggesting that Dame Naida Glavish's “communication with the PM” formed part of "a chilling read". Apologies for getting that wrong, and/or possibly misinterpreting "a chilling read" as criticism. Thanks for making your intentions clear.
Are you sure it is not a few in opposition to the memorial, that are overriding the wishes of the families and community because they got their noses out of joint?
The majority of families don't want the memorial there. Some don't want one at all (there are many other memorials to the tragedy).
You must be hearing different information from me.
I read/heard that the majority of families, local IWI etc, agreed.
Then Glavish and co came along after it was announced, and decided they were opposed.
The line you're hearing is wrong, but I don't blame you for that. There has been a huge misinformation campaign from the Ministry around that. Just on mana whenua involvement, here are some examples of how this process lacked genuine support and consultation:
There's lots more. This has been a shabby process, with mana whenua and the majority of families sidelined by a deceptive ministry.
As far as the families are concerned:
1. Colmar Brunton were commissioned to conduct a survey of Erebus families to get feedback on a suitable location. Based on the results of that survey, Mataharehare is totally unsuitable.
2. The Boffa Miskell report, commissioned by the Ministry, highlighted a number of problems with the site, and recomended a location closer to Auckland Airport.
3. Following the CM survey and the BM report, Auckland Council invited Ministry officials to Auckland to view alternate sites. The Ministry rejected that offer on 20 August 2018, and wrote that staff would “come to Auckland (earlier the better) to discuss how we square things away with council on confirming the site and to visit the site with a couple of the family members we have a close relationship with”.
"A couple of families". Does this not smell to you?
The hospitality industry amuses me, no type of business even in the best of times fails anywhere as much as cafes and bars and restaurants, probably mainly because anybody who can burn a cheese toastie thinks they are a chef and those who can’t give you a drink at a party without spilling it over everyone in sight thinks they would make a great bartender. The ones that have failed would have fallen over without Covid help.
The hospitality industry, the tourism industry, the retail industry, all and any front facing other industries……….they would have all failed even without covid.
Yeah, totally.
So a business that, through no fault of it's own, suddenly has no customers, and yet has to still pay most of it's fixed costs, "would have fallen over anyway, without Covid's help"?
So a cafe or bar in Auckland that has been forced to close for 10 weeks due to no fault of their own, and seen their turnover drop say between 90% (as they can now do a few takeaway coffees) – 100%, would have failed anyway?
Do you actually think about what you type before you type it or sense check it?
You have obviously never run a business (or shouldn't).
If we are going to let them fail as suggested, first we would need to legislate away personal guarantees on the lease or we're gonna have a helluvalot more homless families. Banks and landowners can share some pain.
from todays update and maybe we can stop that Maori bashing in regards to vaccination.
https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/covid-19-delta-outbreak-94-cases-today-including-seven-in-waikato/MK4XLUYN6D7A3UHMCUB6JVPBLM/
As for Aucklanders, mask up, keep distance, keep your bubbles smalls, sanitize and consider anyone around you as potentially infected.
94 cases.
Jacinda Ardern: put that wall right back up again! 😀
Lock down Auckland and Waikato, South Island to level 1
It's the only way to be sure.
Ha!
On a completely unrelated note I love this movie, I really do. Its always in my top 5 action movies of all time
You have one of the best heroes of all time being a complete bad ass and its a woman and no one batted an eye because the set up of her character, the writing, the performance, the chemistry all contributed to a strong, flawed yet courageous, believable character carrying out the heroes journey to perfection
You believe she can shove a corporate suit against a wall (great performance by Paul Reiser): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=casQQhO1jkw
You believe she can take charge and come up with great decisions on the fly:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GrQHPZrnbPk
You believe she can earn the respect of others without putting other people down:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YPMk-EEyOpE
When she loads up an goes down into the depths of hell (at least that was the symbolism for me) you root her own:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pLhdtd3eJF8
Then you have this scene: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kmT_-erX0TA&t=74s
Every time it gets a hell ya! Every. Single. Time.
Sci-Fi action horror perfection and the nuclear family gets a positive shout out as well
What more do you want from a movie
"Game over man, game over"
Vasquez – "Lets Rock!"
"You ever been mistaken for a man"
"No, have you?"
Sorry – it's a bit like Die Hard 6 compared to Alien 1.
The thing is Alien is a horror sci fi classic but its horror first and foremost and very well done but Aliens is action sci fi with horror elements so yeah if you're wanting a retread of Alien you'll be disappointed but if you're one of the greatest action movies ever made you'll be happy
Quite similar to Terminator vs Terminator 2 really
Fair enough, if you agree that neither Terminator movie equals the quality of Alien 1. I like Terminators 1+2, but…
that only works if NI and SI are firewalled from each other.
Level 1 won't happen fullstop until children under 12 are vaccinated 1/3 of new cases are children.
Level 2 is a good short term solution until we get the future of NZ vaccinated.
It looks like the FDA might give approval by Dec 1 in the US.
If we can get that cohort vaccinated by the end of February then we should go to Level 1 .with masks with vaccination passports.by the end of 2022 with new antiviral medicines becoming available .We should be back to near normal.
Provided Covid doesn't mutate to a degree where vaccines don't provide protection.
Def' Sth Island level 1.
Ridiculous and easy as shit to control borders
Level 1 but no interisland travel isn't a great life for a bunch of people either.
Highest daily Covid cases in NZ ever.
I picked a 100 a day by the end of the month.
Modelling this is going to get tough (one has to profile the infectious and their associates accurately) (we need the infectious to prefer the company of the double vaxxed).
This might get too high for comfort by 1 November (rising towards 200 and contact tracing capacity will end chance of any easing in November).
The data on the infected (no vaccination or one dose or within 2 weeks of a second dose or two doses 6 months ago) will be telling.
The Wall:
that is a bit arbitrary don't you think?
.
Sadly, I'm afraid it's the North side for you.
rude!
Dunno if I'd call them "rude" exactly … but the accursed northern hordes are certainly barbarians … or, in your specific case, Bavarians.
you know me so well, tho i do not live in the north.
.
tbf … Bayern is one of the Great Clubs of Europe … Beckenbauer, Gerd Muller, Sepp Maier, Karl-Heinz Rummenigge, Lothar Matthäus, Jürgen Klinsmann, Thomas Müller … and Bavaria is one of the prettiest regions of Europe … socially & politically conservative ? yes … but let’s be fair about this … outrageously gorgeous with it.
I see a true connoisseur.
bahahahahahahahah,
but seriously Rotorua and Taupo are good, as is Whakatane.
As we get closer to Auckland getting down to level 2, can we imagine for a moment the noise that is going to be generated from south of the border.
(Assuming that area is covid-free at that time)
I don't even contemplate any such move, and i apply the same rules for auckland here.
You know, there's always a way over a wall…
https://youtu.be/jwS2KlxKXZ8?t=83
Trying to remain optimistic, but 150,000 of my fellow Aucklanders not yet vaccinated (first dose) … that's not good. Running out of excuses for them.
And this is the kind of idiot we're dealing with … incentives for NOT being vaccinated:
https://www.newshub.co.nz/home/new-zealand/2021/10/auckland-real-estate-agent-tim-webb-apologises-for-unacceptable-offer-giving-unvaccinated-kiwis-discounted-rates.html
woke with a heavy heart, my arse. Woke from a dream of a much lighter wallet. Business Darwin award nomination.
Very sorry for being called out no doubt…
Have to say, we're better off here when there are some RWNJs around, much more interesting. You just need to up your game to the leftie level of political argument Chris and PR 😈😛
Hi weka, did you manage to listen to the Nolan podcasts before they were removed?
(Just got up to Ep 6, and the gagging condition in Stonewalls Terms & Conditions. Wondering whether it's worth a transcription .)
I thought the BBC made them available?
they are here.10 episodes
https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p09yjmph/episodes/downloads
Thanks. I'd already downloaded from weka's link, but missed Ep 4. I'm more of a reader but 5 and 6 seem to have upped the info of relevance.
Am still on the second one. Did listen to an interview with Nolan yesterday, hang on I'll get the link.
interview on the BBC (starts 2hrs 38m)
I've started a post, because he gives two very clear examples of SW influence: Scottish govt removing the word mother from its maternity leave policy, and the BBC changing its news style guide so that homosexuality means same gender attracted rather than same sex. I assume both of those are covered in the podcasts?
Found the first couple of episodes to be basic outlines.
Skipped Ep 4 as my download was corrupted, Ep 5 and 6 giving good specific information of the unquestioning acquiesce of government departments and institutions to Stonewall 'recommendations'.
that trashing of language infuriates me.
Homo/same + sex =same sex = an individual who is sexually attracted to a person of the same sex
Not gender
And genitals do matter
Full and Frank discussions like the Puckish Christ Rogue test it might get up your nose but for democracy to survive we need to able to question both sides to get a better outcome.
yep!
let's not give them delusions of grandeur though. Puckish Chris Rogue test will do.
Pretty sure my delusions are pretty well set by now
Fly my pretties
Make a submission to the Emissions Reduction Plan! The pressure needs to be put on the Govt to make climate action a priority, please take the time to make a submission.
https://action.greens.org.nz/erp_submission_guide
https://action.greens.org.nz/strengthen_the_erp
50,000 new cases in a day in the UK with 83% vaccinated. That would be 4,000 new cases approx a day in New Zealand.
That’s leaping away Trickle, a week ago it was in the mid twenties. Watch Melbourne.
yeah. Unless they pull something spectacular, we'll be getting more deaths soon.
Something spectacular? Like what?
A cracker. If you pull a cracker a small plastic piece of crap usually jumps out.
Australia has by and large contained the virus within states. We could create some more borders and do the same. They say it's hard to put one around the Waikato but surely not as hard as having another outbreak. Containers would do a good job of blocking roads.
Many would think some jail time would be appropriate for the likes of the North Shore party ratbags.
I mean, technically as an isolation violation there's probably already the potential to detain them on health grounds. But then you'd need temporary facilities set up – stadiums are traditional – and everything goes downhill from there.
Unless you give them enough vodka and dope that they don't realise they're in isolation for a fortnight lol
Out of curiosity can you tell me whether the 2 people (supposedly prostitutes) who went into North Auckland were charged with any offence?
Or the gang members who ignored the rules during a tangi?
Or the ones who were picked up bringing huge amounts of cash into Auckland from the Waikato after bypassing the lockdown?
Or is it just the ones partying on the North Shore who you think should be charged?
Last minute apology by Peters.
As good as you'll get from the guy – still adamant that everything he said was accurate about a member of a specific gang doing a specific thing, but admitting that the specific gang member wasn't Harry Tam.
But his source was still “credible”, lol
5 minutes to spare, and no sign of having worked with Tam or Mansfield in crafting his response (but good to see the complete text of the lawyer letter). May be just enough to get Peters off the hook though. Still if there was a gang associate present in Northland, then you'd expect them show up on CCTV footage…
The Mongrel Mob may be bad news, but as far as I'm aware, are not actual vampires!
"The Mongrel Mob may be bad news, but as far as I'm aware, are not actual vampires!"
Not literal anyway…
Anyone got any idea if the vaccination status of the new covid cases for the day is published anywhere?
It's not data they have had stats on so far (but obviously it is the sort of information any modeller would want to know if they were to make useful forecasts).
What is.
https://www.health.govt.nz/our-work/diseases-and-conditions/covid-19-novel-coronavirus/covid-19-data-and-statistics/covid-19-current-cases
https://www.health.govt.nz/news-media/media-releases/94-community-cases-covid-19-5-new-border-cases-89-percent-aucklanders-receive-one-vaccine-dose
Pingao below was able to point me to a very helpful RNZ link.
It's a couple of days out of date, but it's showing 2005 total cases.
1541 of those are unvaccinated (of those 409 are under 12), of the 1132 unvaccinated eligible adults, 138 are hospitalised
91 of the cases are fully vaccinated, of which 3 are hospital.
There's also various categories of partially vaccinated. Make what you will of whether just one dose provides substantial protection.
Of those 409 cases in kids, 7 are hospitalised. That to me is a very good argument for why we should also be vaccinating kids as soon as we reasonably can, contra those agin vaccinating our kids.
Yeah I found that on the RNZ site.
What will inform on the under 7's, is if ICU care is needed for any of the cases (and how they respond to treatments available – such as monoclonal antibodies).
It's not that encouraging
A positive is that the low numbers of the double vaxxed being infected.
Another positive is that most of those being infected are not the older and vulnerable to more serious outcomes (thus low ICU demand so far).
It is on the MOH link (top one – but click on case demographics, rather than current cases).
Thank you.
I obviously wasn't using the right search terms.
Reply to Andre at 26. Try Radio NZ "Covid-19 data visualisations: NZ in numbers". Scroll down to "vaccination status of cases … "
Overall the website "visualisations" are not necessarily entirely accurate/up-to-date as I've seen other figures relating to say, DHB vaccination numbers on the MOH but it is probably a good guide.
Sorry – I've given up on trying to paste links as it doesn't seem to work anymore on my mobile.
Thank you, very helpful link.
https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/in-depth/450874/covid-19-data-visualisations-nz-in-numbers
Those unvaccinated vs vaccinated case rates and hospitalisation rates could probably do with being much more widely publicised. They really are that dramatic.
Source MOH – not so easy to find on the MOH site though.