Ardern held media sway during an extended lockdown, preventing political parties from holding public meetings of more than 10 people until very recently. Hampering the opposition’s public meetings on the eve of an election was a political win for Labour.
Ardern maintains public confidence in her elimination strategy despite its huge cost in terms of jobs, dollars and health. When Ardern called 2020 the COVID election she knew she had it in the bag due to high public confidence in her handling of the crisis.
It is extremely disappointing that other political parties did not bother analysing and challenging Ardern’s claim of going “hard and early”. A party that successfully provided an alternative way forward to the unsustainable elimination strategy would have created an opportunity for huge political mileage.
Whoever is responsible for National’s campaign strategy needs a good kick up the backside for missing the glaring opportunity to snatch Ardern’s expected win straight from her hands.
Now that the dust has settled, finally, attention is paid to Ardern’s COVID claims. Dr Gibson, Professor of Economics at Waikato University, writing for NZCPR, is critical of Ardern, saying she went weeks too late and “botched” our preparation for the arrival of the virus.
“Taiwan recorded their first case of Covid-19 on 21 January, a full month before New Zealand’s first case
Taiwan usually has about three million visitors a year from China, while New Zealand gets about 400,000. The gap is even bigger in terms of visitors to China (who posed a risk of spreading the disease upon their return)
Taiwan has not had a lock-down
Yet despite earlier exposure and much greater risk due to more travel to and from China, Taiwan has just 22 cases per million of Covid-19 while the rate in New Zealand is currently 17 times higher.”
Gibson says when Ardern moved she went way too hard. The strategy parroted by every health expert in the country, media, and the opposition is that the decision to lock down was a simple trade-off between saving lives or keeping the economy rolling. Gibson says it’s just not that simple.
We are still hearing about the lives lost (and that will be lost) from deferred hospital checks and missed treatments, but Gibson talks about the consequences of a failing economy on mortality, particularly the poor.
“…a key fact being ignored in New Zealand discussions is that poorer people and poorer societies have lower life expectancy. The actions being taken to deal with the Covid-19 risk are making New Zealand poorer, and so will reduce life expectancy. While there has been some discussion of possible ‘micro-level’ side-effects of the lockdown, such as potentially more suicides but fewer traffic accidents, it will be at the ‘macro-level’ via income effects on life expectancy that the major effects will occur.”
Gibson is highly critical of Ardern’s BIG SCARY NUMBER approach to COVID. Everyone failed to scrutinise Ardern’s statement that sent the country into a panic.
“If community transmission takes off in New Zealand the number of cases will double every five days. If that happens unchecked, our health system will be inundated, and tens of thousands of New Zealanders will die.”
Tens of thousands of people didn’t die and amazingly Ardern is lauded instead of being berated for scaring us half to death at enormous cost. Our health experts supported Ardern’s scaremongering by not critiquing the modelling or explaining the data and projections in a way we could understand in order to make an informed judgement.
“We are shown big numbers of projected deaths, with no context to interpret them. Deaths are bad, more deaths are worse, so it feeds into the narrative that there is no alternative to the approach taken. This approach to public policy tends to disempower people who are not privy to the epidemiological models.”
We have not taken seriously hydroxychloroquine used in conjunction with zinc and either azithromycin or doxycycline as a preventative and treatment for COVID (in recommended dosages.)
Trump took hydroxychloroquine daily back in May. If he is still taking it his recovery from COVID will be very interesting compared to Boris Johnson who took no COVID preventative and almost died. My money’s on the media choking on their despicable jubilation if Trump bounces back in no time at all.
It’s not too late for opposition parties to pay attention to the biggest problem facing our economic recovery, but can they be bothered? Do the Nats in the backroom plotting party strategy really want this win? It makes you wonder.
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