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.
The Heron Report has been released and reinforces the public perception that this was a cynical misuse of confidential information by National for political purposes and a clusterfuck of epic proportions.
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
The Herald is reporting that Nikki Kaye will announce her retirement from politics today.
Westpac Helicopter Trust’s claim that it had not breached privacy rights of Covid sufferers raises some serious questions about why Michelle Boag was provided with sensitive information. And who she has provided it to.
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.
National has recently been upping the campaign rhetoric but there is a disturbing lack of policy detail.
It is great to see former Prime Minister Helen Clark join the debate about re-opening New Zealand’s borders. We need it. There is no better time for New Zealand to re-launch itself to the world.
National Backbench MP Hamish Walker has claimed that Queenstown is to be invaded by people from India, Pakistan and Korea when the reality is the Government is considering using empty Hotels for quarantining returning kiwis.
David Clark has announced his resignation as Health Minister.
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.
National and elements of the media have gone full on attack on the Government’s and Ashley Bloomfield’s Covid 19 performance. Which is unusual given that there is still no examples of community transmission and all recent infections have been picked up through the quarantine system.
Michael Woodhouse has recently had a difficult ethical dilemma. He received information suggesting that there were major weaknesses in the Covid quarantine system. Should he do the responsible thing and point out these weaknesses to the authorities or should he play Gotcha politics?
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.
Chris Penk has written a book suggesting that the Government’s Covid 19 response has been terrible. Because it was not quite perfect.
Thanks to clear and decisive leadership, an intelligent government, the decision to go hard and fast, respect for science, and overwhelming commitment to local kiwis we can celebrate a milestone, Aotearoa has no current cases of Covid 19.
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.
