Jacinda Ardern likes to boast – contrary to the public record – that she “went hard and early” with New Zealand’s lockdowns, thus saving the lives of countless New Zealanders. But only one of St Jacinda the Kind’s boasts is in any way true. The harsh truth is that she dithered for weeks before slamming down the panic button. The lives of New Zealanders, a tiny, isolated population with almost no mass transit systems – were never going to be under any great threat.
The only truth is that Ardern went hard. Very hard. New Zealand’s lockdowns were among the harshest in the world. Exceeded, probably, only by Victoria’s Daniel Andrews (and whatever the CCP got up to in Wuhan that they won’t tell anyone about).
And while the evidence shows that lockdowns do nothing to save lives from COVID, they do have some very big effects. Just not the sort that politicians strutting their COVID credentials like to admit to.
More than a million Australians have sought mental health treatment during the COVID-19 pandemic, while ongoing lockdowns in Victoria have sparked a social crisis, with a 30 per cent rise in cases in the past four weeks. The first official data revealing the depth of the mental health disaster in Victoria since the second wave outbreak reveals access to some crisis services has risen by up to 67 per cent in the space of four weeks.
Demand for children’s mental health has also skyrocketed in Victoria, with access to services jumping more than 30 per cent since September[…]
Commonwealth health department figures obtained by The Australian reveal that in September and October, 350,884 Victorians sought access to Medicare-funded GPs, psychiatrists, psychologists and counselling treatments. This was a 31 per cent increase on the same period last year and three times higher than the nat¬ional average. A federal health official said the “jurisdictional” difference in relation to Victoria was “stark”.
What’s even worse is that a generation is being sacrificed on the altar of COVID-paranoia in order to grant mostly the very old and very sick just a few more weeks of life.
According to the data, there were 3702 calls to the Kids Helpline by Victorians, a 61 per cent increase in just four weeks.
New Zealand is faring just as badly.
New Zealanders are experiencing more depression and anxiety since the coronavirus lockdown, doctors say, despite the country leading the world in its battle against the pandemic.
That last is nonsense, of course. New Zealand is very far from having the lowest rate of infections or deaths (47th and 45th ranked, respectively) or even total infections and deaths (57th and 56th). But even this middling performance has come at tremendous cost.
GPs working on the front line say “generalised anxiety” is proliferating in the community, and putting a strain on mental health services that are already overburdened.
Dr Bryan Betty, the medical director of the Royal New Zealand College of General Practitioners, said cases of depression and anxiety have risen “substantively” in the wake of the lockdown, and there was anecdotal evidence that more prescriptions were being issued for anti-depressant and anti-anxiety medication. Sleep problems have also been widely reported.
In his own practice, Betty said he was seeing a 15-20% rise in need for psychiatric help, and this was putting a strain on an already dysfunctional system[…]
“There is definitely a sense of fatigue. It’s not just from the patients, but it’s with GPs and frontline workers, I have never quite seen the degree to which they are starting to get fatigued about the volume of work,” Betty said. “I am really concerned about that”[…]
Dr Jo Scott-Jones runs a GP practice in the small Bay of Plenty town of Opotiki, and described the rising levels of community distress as “slow-motion bullet-dodging”.
“What we’re seeing after lockdown is a lift in general anxiety,” said Scott-Jones. “So people are less tolerant of family relationships, or situations at work. So stress in general is causing more distress.”
For all her boasting, New Zealand’s selfie-taking, baby-parading COVID PM has in fact overseen the devastation of New Zealanders’ mental health.
But don’t wait to see her fronting the press every day, dolefully listing every new mental health referral or lockdown-induced suicide.
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