Simon Thornley is claiming that New Zealand’s covid response is a failure and we should be more like Sweden. But it appears that in more recent times Sweden has toughened its stringency tests so that they are similar to New Zealand’s.
Our cities are the nation’s lungs; they recycle and accelerate external goods and transform them internally into faster circulation. Auckland and Christchurch have had tens of billions invested in them over successive local and central governments, but has this improved our strength or wealth as a country at all?
The Herald yesterday posted a story suggesting that Aucklanders were split over the second lockdown when the actual reality was the vast majority were supportive. And a subsequent article pointing out how positive the result was does not clear the perception of negative bias.
The Green Party is facing major push back from members relating to a decision to give shovel ready funding to a private school involved in education about the environment.
Radius Chair and NBR rich lister Brien Cree has a sponsored article in the Herald this morning that is critical of the Government’s Covid response.
This week Donald Trump has defended the US’s abysmal handling of Covid 19 by claiming that the disease is out of control in New Zealand. And National’s rhetoric continues to match what he is saying.
Australian Prime Minister Scott Malcom has indicated he’s getting close to the deal of a lifetime for Australians with a letter of intent from Astra Zenica, who are in third stage clinical trials. Will New Zealand benefit?
Yale have developed a covid saliva test that is not only effective but will be intentionally cheap and easily available.
The High Court has ruled that for technical reasons during the first nine days of the lockdown statements that New Zealanders were legally required to remain at home were incorrect.
Inasmuch as tiny, distant New Zealand need worry about the foreign policy of the United States, it’s worth a drill into what a Democratic Party dominated United States foreign policy might look like.
Gerry Brownlee has chosen to not only repeat his conspiracy theories involving Ashley Bloomfield but also claim that the media is against National. Both claims have no factual foundation.
A coalition of losers has appeared demanding that the election is be delayed. Update: Ardern has announced a short deferral of election day to October 17.
Reading a number of articles in the NZ Herald in recent days calling for change in how we handle outbreaks of covid-19 in NZ. The implied precept is the damage covid-19 poses to the population of NZ over time is less than the immediate economic damage. That covid-19 is like the flu and results in herd immunity. However it is far worse than the influenza pandemic of 1918, much longer lasting and we probably won’t reach herd immunity naturally for generations.
Covid has fundamentally changed society for the better in surprising ways.
Yesterday National suggested a wide based and interesting conspiracy theory involving the Government and the Ministry of Health and all of the Health Boards suppressing news of community spread of Covid 19 for political advantage while at the same time complaining that the Government should be consulting with them on decisions.
*Rhetorical question. Of course they will.
Four cases of community transmission from the same family – presumably without an obvious cause. Lock down for 3 days in the Auckland super city area at level 3 starting noon Wednesday. Level 2 for everywhere else outside of Auckland. Allows time for contact tracing and a later decision once facts are known. Good response.
Four very good reasons why you should vote Labour in this election.
For a few days now Gerry Brownlee has been peddling this dog whistle conspiracy campaign that the Government is hiding bad news about Covid and we should all be really concerned.
Central to the Transition movement from the outset has been the idea of resilience. Usually framed as the ability to ‘bounce back’, it is seen in the Transition movement as being better imagined as the capacity to ‘bounce forward’, i.e. to use it as the opportunity to move forward to something better. How then to ‘bounce forward’ from COVID-19 in such a way that we also move to a way of doing things consistent with the scale of the climate crisis?
In a sign of desperation National has trotted out John Key to campaign that the country’s success in containing Covid should be put to risk because of a misguided perception that it would be good for the economy.
I normally do not do this, tempting fate and all that. But the forces behind this election are so strong that it would take a really dramatic event to change current momentum.
I’m reasonably happy with where the coalition wound up on the quarantine cost recovery. It sends a clear economic signal to businesses and the fools who want to travel during a global pandemic. It will discourage some of the stupidity of the travel addicted. It also balances the legal position. Something that most of the critics clearly aren’t thinking through and cause them to whine without realistic alternatives
A few weeks ago we were at 14 million cumulative confirmed cases of Covid-19 worldwide. A million more cases in just 4 days. Now a few weeks later, we are at 16 million confirmed cases worldwide. The lobbyists and business groups affected by our blocked borders need to get real. We won’t be opening our borders until we get a widely used vaccine later next year (at the earliest). It is too expensive to do so.
It has been obvious about COVID-19 that it is very well adapted to humans. It has evolved a good entry system to the humans, often has mild symptoms, long pre-symptomatic infectious period, and doesn’t kill many of its hosts. What has been less obvious is where it came from. It looks more like South East Asia rather than China.
An occasional series
Audrey Young’s take in Granny Herald was interesting. “No ordinary Labour speech by Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern”. That is because the political ‘business as usual’ approach by the business orientation of National campaigning using the politics of fear and envy doesn’t work well in times of crisis. Business simply has too short a viewpoint to be acceptable in government at present – or increasingly in our uncertain future.
About the only thing that surprised me was that it took so long for a pandemic to really break out into the modern world. Because our evolutionary and recorded history is mainly punctuated and constrained by disease and environmental change. We invented large cities many times in the past and lost them to plague or drought. It looks like we’re going through that phase again – just at a larger level.
A medical treatment of drug used since the 1960s in medicine has proven to be effective in reducing the worst effects of human body over-reactive immune responses to covid-19 infections. This will be a boon for the countries with under developed hospital systems that are at the forefront of the current rising wave of infections. And it isn’t quack ‘science’.
A quick look at rising second wave in the US as covid-19 digs deeper into the less populated states and counties. Because of its deliberate lack of governmental cohesion, the US is a rack of petri dishes testing different strategies. When that comes to disease control and covid-19, that strategy is a bit of a disaster.
It was interesting reading this morning that the updated small business owner loan scheme is now working (unlike the previous guarantee through the banks version). National’s new Small Business shadow minister Todd Muller should be all over this between now and the election offering helpful suggestions. I’m going to be fascinated looking at those to see what type of small business he is trying to help…
Hopefully, this post-legislative scrutiny will provide a chance to correct any excesses.
School’s back on Monday, but the medical community is still struggling to understand covid 19
In terrible news, our feline masters can both get covid-19, and they can infect other cats. Fortunately so far they have largely been asymptomatic apart from some big cats.
We don’t know if there can be cat to human transmission. But I suspect it is likely. Obvious implications about being a issue for breaking transmission chains.
Like measles, covid-19 could become endemic. Never dying out entirely. Needing to be controlled in human denser populations into the indefinite future. That is the warning from top World Health Organisation officials. Like me, they’re looking at reported research into covid-19 immunities and the picture isn’t encouraging. This is no time to be complacent.
The budget site is up and running. Some links here along with Robertson’s speech. This post may get updated if authors feel like it. Otherwise commenters can praise or criticize. Preferably constructively rather than with mindless waffle.
