David Theobald
Four weeks more. Four weeks? Surely now the government has moved from parallel universe territory into extracting the Michael. Four weeks – why not four months, four years or forever?
If they are to dispel any suspicions (convictions) that the stage-managing of the country is based on politics and not evidence-based health concerns, I want to see the evidence these decisions are based on. And I don’t want ‘we are following the science’ to be the opinions (which is not evidence) of modelling experts (modelling is not science).
There is now real-world data available on which to base rational decisions. The modellers have led us down the garden path of fear with a steely resolve. The further they lead us by the nose into what seemed (maybe) a reasonable direction in mid-March the harder the government find it to do an about-face. But being ‘safe’ is the no-lose political position.
We had to flatten the curve to stop the health service being overwhelmed. That never came within a bull’s roar of coming to pass but this has been forgotten. We then were going to ‘eliminate’ the virus and this, you may recall, had a very elastic definition. It has been forgotten that anything in the natural world does not have a 0% or 100%. How close to we have to get to today’s definition of ‘eliminate’ before we say ‘we have done enough over the top reaction and it is time to stop’?
Well, it appears to me that no one has the intestinal fortitude to answer that question, presumably for fear of being proved wrong. They are content to continue kicking the can down the road by putting off any decision in fortnight chunks.
“We will reconsider the position on June 8 when we will consider the possibility of moving to a yet to be defined Level 1 on June 22”.
Really? I want evidence for the fortnight timescale. I have seen estimates that 11 days might be right and also four weeks. Evidence (not modellers’ guesses) that 14 days is correct, please.
“We have to be careful because this disease has a long tail”.
Again, evidence please, the illness in NZ’s current experience appears to have the sort of tail found on Manx cats.
In Level 2 bars opened a week after the rest of the general easing of restrictions because of South Korea. Where is the evidence that this reason as applied to a sparsely populated New Zealand was a reasonable thing to do?
Now we are to be allowed gatherings of 100 but we still have to observe the farcical ‘social distancing’ of 2 metres. There is no chance of that realistically happening. And as an aside, the virus now keeps daylight hours as opposed to magically changing its behaviour at midnight.
It is a hopeless mishmash of non-science dressed up as thought-through policy. And it has been largely accepted by the populace on the back of fear. We have had two months of daily unopposed dire warnings of what will happen if we don’t comply with largely baseless instructions.
And, surprise, surprise, most of it hasn’t happened – nor will it in the future.
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