Let me take you back to August 2020 when Auckland announced 4 new COVID cases. Auckland was put into Level 3 and the rest of the country to Level 2. It was annoying, but manageable, particularly for the rest of the country. People actively used the COVID Tracer app, sanitised their hands, kept their distance and the whole thing went away.
So why, when there were 4 cases last year, did we go to Level 3 in Auckland and Level 2 elsewhere, but now, with only one case (at the time of the announcement), the entire country has been plunged into Level 4?
Something just doesn’t seem right here.
Jacinda Ardern just loves a crisis. She had her teeth whitened specially. Her polling has been dismal lately, which she put down to COVID weariness. Oh yeah? So, how exactly is this going to help, Jacinda?
Clearly even she doesn’t believe that we are COVID-weary. In fact, she thinks the opposite. She thinks a good COVID crisis will improve her polling, as it gives her the chance to appear on TV regularly, with a suitable frowny face to tell us all how dire things are.
No doubt she is also hoping that it will take our attention away from the government’s catastrophic failure over Afghanistan, its divisive race policies or the fact that, thanks to its emergency housing policy, our two largest cities are now unsafe at night. And let’s not mention the fact that, as we have had no community cases for 170 days, this must have come through the border – which is another failure on their part.
People fall for it though. We were expecting visitors on Tuesday night, who cancelled (due to other reasons) before the lockdown was announced. If they had turned up, we would have had drinks, shared snacks and would have had a pleasant evening. But on Wednesday morning, when they wanted to drop something off to us, they left it at the gate. They wouldn’t actually come onto the property.
But what exactly has changed overnight in the South Island that has caused this overly cautious approach?
Jacinda said so. That is all.
In frustration, I posted my disdain for this government on Facebook on Tuesday night. (No, I don’t care if I get sent to Facebook jail, although it is a good way to keep in touch with people overseas.) The responses I got were interesting.
“You’d hate it worse if you got this dam Cov19” (from someone in Auckland)
“New Zealand doesn’t know how lucky it is.” (From the UK)
“Level 4 makes sense” (from someone who lives in Dunedin)
(Commenting on me pointing out that we were put into lockdown in Wellington in February with absolutely no cases) – “Still can’t believe how lucky we were then. And I think only going to level 2 then was a mistake.”
Whaat! There were other comments, mostly about not wanting us to end up like Sydney. I understand that, but I did point out that, as bad as the situation in Sydney has become, the whole of Australia has not been locked down… for that matter, they haven’t even locked down the whole of New South Wales.
And yet we have locked down the entire country for just one case.
The most stupid and irresponsible action here is the suspension of the vaccine programme. Health professionals know how to protect themselves, but for those who want the vaccine, any delays are unforgivable. This government is either totally stupid or it doesn’t really want COVID to go away. It revels in the chaos it creates.
On balance, I go for the former option. This government is totally stupid.
Stuart Nash admitted on Wednesday that, no matter how many people had been vaccinated, we would still have been put into Level 4 with just one case.
This terrifies me because that means there is no way out of all of this. When we have 80% vaccinated, we will still be going into Level 4 lockdowns, because, as we now know, the vaccination doesn’t stop us from catching COVID. This could go on forever.
I feel as if we are in the middle of a witch’s curse. Of course, we all know which witch is to blame.
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