KSK
So now we have it. Lockdowns will continue until we all behave like good little children and have the almost mandatory vaccine. What is the PM smoking? A 90% vaccination rate for all DHBs? And then the booster shots that will also be required.
The vaccine designed for Alpha is not as effective for Delta, let alone future mutations that are already developing and will be presumably be even less disposed to accept the mighty power of the Pfizer ‘vaccine’. This same brew has an effect that attenuates over months, not years. Months! So we are to have an ongoing 90% compliance threat hanging over us forever? New Zealand, I fear for you.
This is not a plan. It is just another power grab. Ardern can do it because she was voted in with no coalition handbrake to stop her. We have no legislative way out of this. All we can do is march in the streets and attend picnics. Groundswell is a month away.
To a certain extent, this unachievable goal of 90% depends on Maori. Maori vaccine uptake has been low despite their concern that their population is vulnerable. The ‘stoush’ in Parliament on 21 October seemingly addresses that, as reported by Thomas Coughlan in the NZ Herald. Pem Bird, a past President of the Maori Party, wants vaccine choice. He doesn’t want his community to be restricted to just the Pfizer vaccine on offer.
“We’re not following the Crown’s directive. That has been our position for a while, he said. “We won’t jump when we are told to. We want the freedom to choose. We want a different vaccine.”
nzherald
It seems an odd juxtaposition of Maori Party stances. On the one hand, the Party fears for its people and, on the other, rebuffs the available option and totally rejects the premise of the Government’s offer. So the hoopla and encouragement, the vaxxathon and the enthusiastic support of the PM in central North Island communities have all been a waste of time and yet more money.
The right to choose is becoming a contentious issue, and our choice is between a rock and a hard place. Te Pati Maori seems to be choosing the hard place. There is no other vaccine yet available here. Is the Novavax going to be cleared for use here? Will that then assist Maori uptake? Can their at-risk cautious communities wait that long? Can the country wait that long? No, it can’t. Not if it wants to function at any level of the government-mandated definition of freedom to pursue a so-called normal life. But normal is never going to happen again as long as this madness continues.
Despite our PM’s smiley, sometimes masked and sometimes unmasked face, in her recent junket, kaumatua in Murupara “won’t accept the vaccine”. So they and other Maori communities will be held up by media and the government as holding the country to ransom, deepening the divisions in our society caused by the government’s mandates even further.
Labour’s Peeni Henare is encouraging the Maori uptake but he has been largely unsuccessful in this so far, so it remains to be seen how effective he will be from the announcement of ongoing doom on Friday. Will there be more bribes and chocolate fish?
And so here we sit. Again. Faced with obscurity and a shuttered future. All DHB’s at 90%? The PM is out of control. Out of any rational planning process. Out of favour with more than just the recalcitrant and resistant. The requirement to be double vaccinated may well be made law. She has changed other laws to suit her, so why not another? The freedom to choose is fast becoming a quaint notion.
Papers and passports, more and more restricted access to our daily lives. The government is hellbent on a sinister mission to destroy this country. The economy, the people, education for our children, the hope for the future.
