The government’s Covid-19 message this week fuelled anxiety and fear when the country was locked down at very short notice. Panic ensued, with people clinging to the government’s Covid-19 elimination strategy of masking, social distancing, contact tracing and testing mandates.
The six o’clock news the previous night contained footage of people being asked why they were queued up in cars outside testing stations. Reasons included “I have a cold” or “I live in an area which is a location of interest”. Rationality went out the window and was replaced by the panicked question, “What if I have Covid?”
The Associate Minister of Health appeared on the AM show where questions were asked about why people waited for hours. Along with the neurotic and the anxious were actually case contacts displaying Covid-19 symptoms, some of them eventually driving home untested after waiting for hours.
This is a travesty and a massive failure of the government’s contact testing regime.
Partial Transcript AM Show Friday 20 August 2021. Full interview.
Ryan Bridge:
We have heard from people…in fact the owners of Passion Bakery in Birkdale were waiting nine hours yesterday. So they’re a location of interest…there was a positive case in their establishment, they waited nine hours to get a test – couldn’t get one. What’s your message to them? One of them has flu like symptoms.
Ayesha Verrall:
I…I’m sorry to hear that and I think I just want to say thank you to the people who did…who were patient and waited for, what I know was a long time in some cases to get tested. I think we are likely to see on the statistics that yesterday was one of the largest…the largest day for testing that we’ve had in Auckland and there was pressures. In a sense that reflects the hard work being done by the contact tracers which has forced a lot of demand through into the testing system. We have put on more testing sites. That’s available on the Ministry of Health website but I also want to make this plea: that we want those testing resources for people who are contacts, for people who have symptoms, people who have been to locations of interest. If you are not in one of those categories you don’t need to get in the queue. It’s important that those resources are available for those that are at the highest risk.
Ryan Bridge:
Is that your sense of it? That there are people joining the queue that are just anxious but not sick or a contact.
Ayesha Verrall:
Look, it’s an anxious time but yeah we want to make sure that the people going through are those that have been at locations of interest, symptomatic or contact.
Ryan Bridge:
How many more testing stations are you putting up today?
Ayesha Verrall:
Look…I…I know there was definitely um…aah…a couple that I heard about yesterday but like…I don’t have the precise details of which ones they are.
Ryan Bridge:
Do you know the capacity of them, or where they are? Because people are again lining up this morning. Already around Auckland they are in their cars and they are packing lunch.
How is it possible to appease a public that the media have groomed to believe that following government instructions to the letter keeps them safe from the “deadly” Delta variant? The media lied about the Delta variant and they lied so well some people became irrational.
Mike Hosking interviewed UK virologist Dr Chris Smith who said the Delta variant is actually less deadly but harder to control.
“The severity of cases that people are presenting with are not greater, on average, than with other strains or variants of the virus. But what it does do is to spread better.”
Newtalk ZB
How hard is it for our Covid experts to allay fears by reviewing the UK data collated on the Delta variant? Or does this not fit Aysha Verrall’s government which is fighting Covid-19 by instilling fear.
It really is little surprise that they are losing the fight because the irrational fear that they created is becoming too difficult to control.
Note: Cam Slater reviewed the UK data presenting facts that contradict our government’s scaremongering rhetoric.
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