Last week as the government took its foot off our throats and allowed us the partial freedom to move around and socialise again, the move to Level 2 came with the usual admonishments about what would happen if we took too many liberties with this new found freedom. Most of us were free to go back to normal, but not the bars. The clueless fools haven’t enough understanding of anything to grasp that keeping bars closed for another week could kill off thousands of jobs. My heart bleeds for bar owners and staff who have been relegated to irrelevance by this government and sentenced to another week of torture, for absolutely no health gain whatsoever. This is more of the “it’s only two working days” garbage that our inept prime minister spouted when announcing the end of Level 4.
Last week they micromanaged the instructions about what was going to be permissible and what businesses would have to do in order to do business safely and “save lives”. They are so inept, that after a lockdown that started on March 26th, they got to Level 2 seven weeks later and still didn’t have their act together and were planning right up to the last minute and then changing things YET AGAIN.
Seriously, these are all people who remained on full pay throughout the lockdown and were able to “work from home” and not worry about their futures, their families, their needs, their security or their finances – while making decisions that crippled and deeply hurt many New Zealanders.
If you’re in any doubt about how smart these folk are, have a look at this from the covid19.govt.nz web site
Who needs to collect contact tracing information
All businesses, except retail, must record details of all people’s movement on their premises. They should also keep people 1 metre apart at all times, where practicable.
Retail stores should still keep records of their employees and any visitors, such as maintenance workers or suppliers. They need to keep customers 2 metres apart at all times, where practicable.
- Last week, retailers were being told to prepare to record all customer details. Today, it’s all off. Retailers no longer need to record customer details
- All other businesses must record details of all people’s movement on their premises. One might ask why the local motor mechanic needs to do this when a retailer doesn’t. What about the local engineering workshop? What about the hundreds of other businesses that are not in retail? And why is retail exempt?
- They should also keep people 1 metre apart at all times, where practicable. Should? Where practicable? So COVID is only a risk if we feel we should protect people from it or if it’s practicable?
- Retail stores should still keep records of their employees – seriously, are the people who wrote this nonsense insane? What employer doesn’t have a record of their employees? Of who is working on any given day? Perhaps people just walk in off the street and “self appoint” themselves and start selling stuff.
- OK – keeping track of visitors such as maintenance workers or suppliers is fair enough, but then
- They need to keep customers 2 metres apart at all times, where practicable. So for other businesses it’s 1 metre apart but in retail, customers should be 2 metres apart. That will be because COVID is much more volatile in retail stores than in other businesses. But in all cases, it only applies where it’s practicable.
Here’s the thing. Either Covid-19 is a major problem or it isn’t. I can’t see how you can have a dollar each way on it and that’s been one of the things that’s been making my head spin since day one. Supermarkets OK – Butchers not OK. Why?
At the end of the day though – look at this graph:
Our case number peaked on April 6th with 929 and on May 16th we had 49. I’m thinking the health authorities know exactly where each one of those 49 is, where they’ve been, who they’ve been in contact with and as long as that lot are kept away from the rest of us, they need to leave us alone to get on with our lives.
This patronising BS game has gone on long enough.