It took just three community cases and 24 hours for the Prime Minister to go “hysterical and premature” on Valentines Day. Papatoetoe is ground zero for the latest incidence of COVID-19 community infection that has resulted in the Government putting Auckland into Alert Level 3 and the rest of New Zealand into Alert Level 2.
We know that these cases visited New Plymouth while asymptomatic, yet while Auckland was placed into Level 3, New Plymouth, the South Island and Stewart Island were all placed on Alert Level 2.
As of Wednesday, there were two additional community cases, both of which are linked to the original household. It does appear that the Government has seriously over-reacted in its response to these three new cases.
Armed with this knowledge, the Government reduced the Alert Levels for the country with Auckland dropping to Level 2 and the rest of New Zealand returning to Level 1. Papatoetoe High School will still remain closed for the rest of the week. These Alert levels will be reviewed again at 4pm on Monday.
Having had a third, albeit short lived, lockdown inflicted upon the country, New Zealand’s economic recovery has taken a stumble with the impact of three days on trading being only part of the damage inflicted. Uncertainty is difficult to measure outside of regular surveys but it is impossible for business and consumer confidence to emerge from this short lockdown unscathed.
Since 2017, New Zealand has been governed by politicians who eliminate entire industries without warning (oil and gas exploration), locked down and virtually shut down part or all of the country and are in the process of passing retroactive legislation to invalidate petitions triggering referenda on the implementation of Maori wards in councils. If your livelihood could be wiped out without even an election campaign as a warning, your job yo-yoing in and out of viability or your previously legal actions declared illegal, that is going to have an impact on how you plan for the future.
Even as the vaccine finally arrives at our shores, after lunatic asylums such as Zimbabwe have already commenced distribution, you’d think this anomalous pandemic might finally stop risking the obliteration of our freedoms.
Unfortunately, it would appear things are going to get worse and Act’s David Seymour deserves some of the blame/credit. Act may be returning to some of its Association of Compulsion Touters roots with Seymour demanding contact tracing be made compulsory for every New Zealander in every business they visit, since January 12.
“When we made masks on public transport compulsory very few people didn’t comply. Using the app or manually signing in needs to become part of everyone’s culture; tell them it’s compulsory Prime Minister and they’ll buy in, just watch them.”
That is a horrific piece of advocacy from a party which remains the most pro-freedom party in Parliament. David has made the argument that it is worth losing a little bit of freedom through compulsory contact tracing to avoid losing a lot of freedom in future lockdowns. “Those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety,” is an argument put forward by Benjamin Franklin which Seymour will be very familiar with.
The argument I put forward is that the Government should not possess such wide-ranging powers to arbitrarily put the country into lockdown by diktat. Giving up some liberty to avoid government stripping away a lot of liberty misses the point; the government already possesses powers it shouldn’t and the solution is not to provide it even more.