Category: Health
Under the traffic light system, Jacinda Ardern will take the ‘blame game’ to new heights by dividing New Zealand into two classes of citizens - the vaccinated with superior rights and freedoms, and unvaccinated, relegated to second-class status in their own country.
Infected vaccinated and unvaccinated subjects have similar viral loads, and transmission capacity. Immunity following natural infection is better and more durable than that induced by vaccination. There is no sense in immunising those who have had Covid infection in the last 6 months.
Will the Prime Minister continue her authoritarian divide and rule, or will she realise that in a democracy true leadership involves protecting rights, not trampling them into the ground.
Ardern did think she was teaching the rest of the world how to cope with a pandemic. She has been brought down to Earth with a very loud bump.
With the health system already under serious pressure, it is sheer madness for Labour to consider pressing ahead with the upheaval that would be caused by major structural reform at a time when the Covid-19 elimination strategy is being abandoned.
The decision to abolish DHBs and replace them with a new centralised national bureaucracy in which decision-making will be further removed from health professionals and communities was both abrupt and drastic.
Since the election, one out of every seven people who voted for Labour have shifted their support to another party. All it takes is another one out of every seven to do the same and its game over for Labour and He Puapua.
It is now clear that the Government has staked its political future on the Pfizer vaccine strategy, which requires near universal vaccination and regular booster doses.
The apparent kindness of locking down to limit Covid-19 deaths will, instead, be killing more people by making us poorer - lockdowns are one of our greatest peacetime policy failures.
The Level 4 lockdown imposed on March 25 2020 in New Zealand was the world’s most restrictive set of closure and containment policies at the time.