What Y2K and COVID-19 Have in Common

For anyone too young to remember Y2K, it was a very expensive non-event invented by IT charlatans to scare the world into paying them a significant amount of money to fix precisely nothing.

The argument went that when the year 1999 ticked over to 2000, all the computers would malfunction due to not being able to roll ‘99 into ’00. Planes would fall out of the sky, ATMs and IT mainframes would shut down and the world would fall into turmoil. Years of testing and nonsensical modelling and fixes preceded the big event each with an eye-watering budget attached.

When the big day came and the year 2000 rolled in, zero planes fell from the sky, ATMs and computer networks still worked perfectly. Governments, Corporates and the dons of the IT industry hailed their foresight and planning and declared themselves planning and crisis management geniuses who had allowed everyone to dodge a mega bullet; an asteroid that was going to explode mother earth.

It was never mentioned, explained or acknowledged that countries who had zero budget allocated to Y2K and its fixes also had no issues with planes falling out of the sky, ATMs or their computer networks.

The Y2K problem never existed; there was no need for panic or fixes or massive spend. It was the biggest scam I’d seen in my life time until a couple of months ago.

Ladies and gentlemen, I introduce you to the COVID-19 world coronavirus crisis. There is a key difference in that COVID-19 does actually exist, it just exists along with numerous other coronaviruses that are present and always have been present. The comparison to the Y2K invention is with regard to the cavernous discrepancy between the threat scenario – fueled by the media and the Government, versus the reality that it’s barely registerable as a threat to one’s life.

Jacinda Ardern has misled New Zealand severely; impeding the future of the next generation with an extremely large debt anchor whilst simultaneously impinging on the human rights of the country; bankrupting small business owners and creating a mental health and domestic violence crisis.

The initial and continued scare tactics and modelling undertaken to underpin the government’s actions need to be fully investigated post-crisis with appropriate repercussions where wrongs have been committed.

Warning of 34,000 deaths and using that as a basis to ruin the economy and people’s lives is simply not morally defensible. The reality is in the actual numbers if people would care to look at them. New Zealand has had 14 deaths with most not being able to be tagged as COVID-19 given the other morbidities of the patients at a worst-case mortality rate of 0.1%. As a point of reference in the same time period COVID-19 has been in New Zealand, approximately 5,500 people have died of various other causes. Another reference point is that over the Easter weekend in 2019, 17 people died on the roads. These were young people in their prime, not people in palliative care. New Zealand didn’t shut the roads after Easter 2019. 

For the many articles and references pointing the finger at Singapore as the next scare tactic of what could happen with the famous “second wave”, Singapore has had only 11 deaths over a longer time period of infection than New Zealand with many more positive tests and thus an even lower mortality rate.

The spike in Singapore cases reflects a better and more thorough testing program and will only go to prove how innocuous COVID-19 is as the true mortality rate will tumble even further as testing continues to widen. The lack of balanced reporting in New Zealand is at the core of the issue. The media have failed as a safeguard to a free and open society. The media are failing in their core role of fostering a democracy that’s accountable to all its citizens. There’s more truth in the excellent and independent Pyongyang Times than any of New Zealand’s publications or media other than just a very few reporters who actually attempt to bring some balance to much public derision.

New Zealand publications troll for the latest sad case to publish, interviewing those in grief, simultaneously looking for some outpost article on what a wonderful leader New Zealand has. No one in the world truly gives a hoot about Jacinda or what she is doing to New Zealand, as even the half-educated have worked out there is little to no risk. Sweden is a month away from herd immunity after doing precisely nothing. Brazil is fine. There never was a crisis.

Let’s talk about the Y2K equivalent Covid specialists. The most commonly wheeled out rent-a-quote specialist New Zealand has is Siouxsie Wiles. You have to be wary when you take one person’s opinion and put that above all others or give it more weight, a lot more oxygen and far too much airtime. Remember that this is a career academic fighting for both funding and relevance, and this is her moment to shine in the spotlight and shout about how relevant and clever she is. Except she’s not. Siouxsie scaremongers and makes up scenarios that don’t exist and even attempts to talk about how actual numbers can trick you.

A death is a death, Siouxsie, it is the only reliable data we have. There is research that undoubtedly links obesity and a lack of vitamin D to the rare death of younger patients of COVID-19. In this aspect, Siouxsie Wiles is talking her own book and you can see why she is fearful, but that doesn’t mean she should punish the nation or put her needs in front of all others.

One of the many health professionals I refer to is Stanford professor of medicine Dr John Ioannidis who has concluded in a new study that the risk of death from COVID-19 for people under 65 years of age, even in global “hotspots“, is equivalent to the risk of a fatal car accident for daily commuters.

If you take the data from the best-studied countries such as South Korea, Iceland, Germany and Denmark, the overall lethality of COVID-19 is between 0.1% and 0.4%. The reality is there has not been a spike in mortality in any country across the world year on year. COVID-19 has not caused a mortality spike anywhere. COVID-19 is a statistical non-event. 

My early research into COVID-19 centred around the articles of Doctor John Lee (Professor of Pathology and NHS Pathology Consultant), Doctor Richard Schabas (Ontario’s Chief Medical Officer of health for ten years and Chief of Staff at York Central Hospital during SARS crisis in 2003) and Nobel prize winner Peter Doherty. I have also covered hundreds of other specialists given my background isn’t medical just as Grant Robertson’s isn’t business. We are both attempting to educate ourselves and take in as many viewpoints as possible to ascertain what the real threat is here.

To fully encapsulate and understand the threat, we need to determine the actual percentage of total deaths COVID-19 is causing. Going through numerous articles I ascertained three main points. The first being that prior to COVID-19, the cause of infection when someone died of a respiratory illness generally wasn’t recorded. The second being that the low number of tests are skewing the figures. In most countries you are only tested for COVID-19 once in the hospital, so the true mortality number isn’t being baked into the actual mortality rate. The third point is to focus on what has happened (facts) rather than what might happen (modelling).

The facts are what New Zealand is sorely missing. The reporting has been one-sided without a counterbalance to provide people with information so they can make informed decisions. What is a fact is that the mortality rate is low and those dying have had multiple morbidities making it difficult to ascertain what really killed them. Globally total mortality hasn’t risen from 2019 numbers. Currently, the worlds COVID-19 deaths represent 0.14 percent of the total of global deaths. There is no spike.

To be truly informed as a nation we need to be provided with the following information. How many people died at the same time last year of respiratory illnesses over the same period? How many people died of suicide? Sepsis? Heart disease? Car crashes? Flu? A weekly table of total deaths compared to historic data should suffice, so people can make an informed decision on what the threat really is.

Jacinda is a massive problem and her cult rather than her results will shape the future of New Zealand for many years to come in a very bad way. It took all previous Governments 164 long years for New Zealand to accumulate 57 billion of debt, during that time building roads and infrastructure and schools and hospitals, providing for treaty settlements and looking after the beneficiaries. Jacinda will double that 164 years of debt in a couple of months by paying money to businesses that can’t open so will go bankrupt regardless, for a crisis that only exists as a vanity project, with rules that make no sense other than providing a daily pulpit to sprout lies, fear and smugness with a healthy dose of faux concern.

This is a PM that loves a crisis because she can’t achieve anything running the country day to day. Kiwibuild was a failure. The caring and genuine Jacinda threw the victims of a sex scandal which happened under her nose under the bus, denying knowledge when all evidence pointed to her knowing exactly what was going on. Pledges on mental health are a long way off what was promised. It isn’t surprising that Jacinda is spiralling New Zealand into a mental health crisis.

Jacinda’s cards were on the table early when she went to the United Nations with her baby in the most blatant cry for attention since Michael Jackson dangled baby Prince Michael II off a Berlin balcony in 2002. The United Nations is Jacinda’s ultimate goal as it’s the bastion of getting nothing done accompanied with long compassionate speeches and equally compassionate faces whilst a million African children die a year because of thoroughly fixable sanitation issues. Jacinda will play that faux-concerned face role exceptionally well. She should be encouraged to go as soon as possible so New Zealand can start cleaning up her mess.

Jacinda has enhanced a culture of taxing or crippling anyone who has worked hard so that beneficiaries can benefit, and she is now in control of a money-printing machine with a finance minister who majored in Arts. These actions will have repercussions on generations to come. Farmers, entrepreneurs, property owners, small business owners, basically anyone with capital at risk has felt the wrath of being punished for hard work and putting their own hard-earned dollars to the test.

It wasn’t long ago that the Ardern government was trying to put a capital gains tax on anyone who had actually had the wherewithal to grow a business and employ people. The bandwagon is circling and the message is loud and clear, don’t risk your capital, grab a benefit. The crack in their plan is that there doesn’t seem to be a lot of thinking about what businesses will survive to pay tax to fund the benefits. It must be an Arts background thing.

Jacinda has lied to New Zealand. No doubt Jacinda’s PR team will spend the next few years spinning a different light on what actually happened, but Jacinda has clearly and methodically misled about the magnitude and threat of COVID-19 and she has recklessly reached into the pockets of the future generations to fund the resulting actions. That money isn’t hers to spend nor is it the Government’s; it’s the future workforce and economy of New Zealand and it’s being recklessly and criminally spent.

Jacinda’s so brazen she even lied as she extended the unnecessary lockdown for a week and then called it two days. The arrogance with which she batted that away when challenged by Mike Hosking was breathtaking, effectively dismissing every business owner in New Zealand.

Moving forward, reporting needs to change to give perspective and allow Kiwis to make informed decisions around the mortality of COVID-19 infections versus the rest of the deaths in New Zealand. We need a media that safeguards a free and open society and fosters a democracy. A media that’s accountable to all its citizens. If we are going to forecast doomsday scenarios of how many could die from COVID-19, we also need mental health experts forecasting how many may take their own lives when their business goes under and how many jobs are being lost each week. Lastly, post this event we need to have an independent enquiry into whether this lockdown had safeguards in the New Zealand Bill of Rights and if it was in fact even legal. There need to be independent investigations into the decisions made by Jacinda Ardern and her influence on the media to impinge on human rights to such a large degree, whilst bankrupting the next generation, when the threat was never so great as that which was, and still is, continually portrayed. 

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