Predictably there’s been calls from our abundant supply of wets, calling Dr Ashley Bloomfield the Man of the Year.
This rings a bell.
A decade back the same calls occurred for the Pike River Mine manager Peter Whittall as Man of the Year. The common denominator; both making nightly TV appearances repeating themselves. Whittall ended up in our criminal court. Bloomfield should bugger off and the government start governing instead of abdicating the role to a health specialist. Sure it’s a health issue but there’s immensely wider economic implications at stake outside Bloomfield’s terrain which the government has blithely ignored.
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Standard political distraction technique of emphasising details and avoiding addressing the major (economic and social) issues…
Why didn’t we lock down the oldies and vulnerable, and keep the economy going (here and globally)?
Why aren’t we, as a human race, looking at the big picture of natural resistance and natural selection, for improving our long term chances of survival?
Sweden have got this 100% right -Jacinda has chased the human health issue and totally lost sight of the bigger economic issue – clearly a possum in the headlights.
Riddle me this.
We would all agree that Sweden is pretty advanced both economically and as an outwardly caring and modern society.
If you believe the figures , why does 1 in 10 confirmed cases end up dying ?
Here it is 1 in 100.
Hmmmm , maybe NZ not so bad after all.
I can put up with it.
Maybe I’m too soft.
Maybe. But it’s too early to draw that conclusion. It will be at least a decade before the comparison of different approaches, and the necessary statistics can be analysed.
Maybe that’s why it’s called ” the human race ” because it’s all encompassing and it is incumbent on us all to act like caring humans ?
The high percentage of recovering cases seems to indicate that this virus is no worse than the flu as predicted by many.
Bang, the penny just dropped! But an economy crash is so much better to report on.
H Moore, I don’t equate it with flu for other reasons, so responding only about recovered cases, it’s even higher than you say.
That’s because the ‘cases’ metric the media reports as if it means something is just those tested, ditto those recovered. With NZ just about the only country long studiously NOT testing the known main transmission source of the virus (asymptomatic carriers), the lockdown means that an unknown number of additional people will also have recovered, but won’t appear in the ‘cases’ number because that’s being kept artificially low by NZ’s systematically restrictive testing.
Some who had it badly (like CNNs Chris Cuomo) will have come up in the data, eg when they presented to hospital. But many others will have had it too, and not appeared in known ‘cases’ at all (which is less, possibly a lot less, than the true number of actual cases). Most people would have felt a bit unwell or thought it was a cold or experienced no symptoms at all (like the ABC’s George Stephanopoulos). Likewise many Kiwis might be as surprised as the BBC’s medical correspondent Fergus Walsh to find they might have had the virus.
So the number who have actually recovered will be higher, and possibly much higher, than the numbers reported.
[Nor does random testing now being done change that. Because it was delayed right to the end of lockdown, the virus’ lifecycle means that most who had it before the lockdown won’t appear on the tests NZ is using, which test only if you have it now, not if you had it].
The same thought crossed my mind a couple of weeks ago! Weirdly similar.
Because its about control, control, control. The book 1984 looks like a good read right about now while you are forced inside your own home.
It is distressing to see our Police being used as a tool by Ardern and her bunch of control freaks. She is not averse to using them herself to further her own desires, eg when she got the previous Police Commissioner to issue a statement that her ‘partner’ had not been interviewed by Police. That was wrong of the Commissioner but you have to wonder what pressures are being put on Police by this govt of losers.
I try to post comments on Stuff. I can’t see any rule I’ve broken, and yet my posts are typically not published (I’m banned)…
In 1984 terms, I have become an unperson…
Yawn
Spot on about the common denominator. Recurring visibility will get people every time. Ultimately any time watching TV is wasted time, which is why I don’t.
While still early – it appears that the worst predicted death tolls aren’t panning out, for which that I’m deeply thankful.
The trillion(s) (of) dollar(s) question is whether that is because:
a) The disease is more easily spread than thought but and less fatal
or b) social distancing measures etc. have been working
To know we have to first test, test, test serologically at scale. The real answer is likely a mix of the two, but at what ratio no one can say.
Health vs economy is a complete false dichotomy (e.g. the restaurants et. al. where always going to suffer) but the fake binary is perhaps rhetorically useful at this stage since letting the tail of the economy horse go is now also tantamount to nearing disaster/iatrogenics (to say nothing of the civil liberties costs incurred).
If anything it has exposed the many inherent fragilities of systems which we should be addressing, especially before next time.
Proportioned steps to allow people under 45 to venture back out with proper precautionary measures should tentatively begin to occur.
To emphasise however: the biological ‘cost’ is never free. Without getting into senescence/Hayflick limits etc. the body only ever has a finite capacity for self-repair. Further any scenario where there is potential organ damage (particularly cardiovascular – the heart is non-regenerative for example) should give any reasonable person pause.
This still isn’t over.
You speak the truth Caleb.
This isn’t over and it may be a generation or more to get it out of our system.
Organ damage hasn’t even been addressed or factored in yet as far as I can see.
I see a major adjustment coming with regard what constitutes a profitable , value adding business that deserves to survive.
To me this concern that we must get the economy up and running so that idealistically no company fails or is allowed to fail is flawed.
Previous to this there was too much over-supply and duplication of effort and service.
These preachers of let the virus run its course and only the strong will survive and the economy is more important fail to see the other side of that.
Only strong , well run , resilient businesses adding value will survive.
Casualties will be both social [human] and economic.
It is a balance and at the moment I am erring on the side of the human cost.
I am a business owner but I am also 64 years old , haha.
Whereas I am 25 with an uncertain economic outlook.
“It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it,” is a quote that keeps coming to mind.
The capital ‘E’ economy is massively fragile because everything has becomes so networked, indebted, and over-optimised. This means extreme outlier events dominate totally. As with last decade it seems we just toss the book out with letting big business be subject to selection pressures. If there is anyone the taxpayers should be rescuing it’s the employees and businesses themselves, not the gamblers who own them. To do otherwise is an utter violation of ethics and incentives. Corporate socialism.
In many ways I see this event (and I have been waiting for the next crash since at least 2017) as having just accelerated trends and killed off anachronisms. Many stopgaps are just delaying the inevitable. Each time we remove volatility we atrophy resiliency/Anti-fragility. Interference often make things worse next time. Like a person lying on a mattress – the longer you lie there the harder it will be to get up, especially if you are being provided for by someone else.
An evolutionary approach is about case by case basis of trade offs and avoiding ruin. A balance is necessary as priorities shift. Short, sharp, hard lockdown done early (at most several weeks) followed by careful opening with retained border controls seemed best weeks to months ago. Being wary that any permanent solution to a temporary problem becomes a permanent problem.
This virus is novel which is alarming, but as perhaps a near comparison we know SARS and MERS cause lung fibrosis in up to 1/3 of those recovered. Anything severe leaves a mark. One reasonable hypothesis to make is that SARS-CoV-2 is an accelerationist virus – taking a few years off your life. If you are old or sick this can kill you. For the young their life expectancy may go down. We won’t know for some time. Try putting a price tag on it though? Either way people now immune have already paid the price, we just need to know who they are so they can keep everything else going.
Pandemics themselves don’t need predicting (just take the red queen hypothesis for example) it’s just we are a more connected world than ever before. People seem to be waking up to the risks however and the actual capacity of our infrastructure.
I am both hopeful and trepidatious about the future.
Those in power always want someone to be the fall guy (sorry “person” to be politically correct). Bloomfield will be that person.
Things go wrong and he will be to blame.
All goes well and everybody else in the current government will be fighting for the accolades.
Dude, this is NZ not Trumpland.
Whilst pondering the strategy of placing a student of doctrine into a strategic position of another organisation, I happened to notice that Dr. Ashley Bloomfield was employed by the World Health Organization throughout 2011. Funny I thought, but then I decided that he would not have allowed their Non-Government Organisation agendas or their vast funding to have impressed his mind or his wallet, so all is well. Lucky too, because now I find that the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, which is behind the Coronavirus vaccine development, is the second-largest donor of money to the WHO and I presume that gives them some clout in steering WHO somewhat. I imagine that the ideal situation for WHO/Gates would be if they could convince some insignificant island nation, with a fledgling leader, to quarantine themselves from the rest of the world, no matter the cost to them! Then if successful in defeating the virus, they stand a very good chance of convincing these simple islanders, that their only hope of reuniting with the rest of the world lies in submitting to life-saving vaccinations $$$.
We are all so lucky to have “The Man of the Year” working for us?
bang on the mark.
Jacinda loves putting Bloomfield out there as a shield. Apparently business reporters aren’t even allowed in at the 1pm meetings to question him on his decisions. Saw him on the AM show yesterday. Appears to be emboldened now to state he’s calling all the shots and telling the government what to do.
Bloomfield must be the only doctor in NZ who doesn’t believe children can pass on the virus. Opening the schools next week will be the biggest mistake this rabble make.
Btw Peter Whittall had 100x more charisma than Bloomfield has. Not saying Whittall was right but just making an observation…
I would like to know what is the governments’ exit strategy. When can we get out from under our beds, including opening the border?
Please correct me if I’m wrong, but it seems to be the current plan is that NZ hides from the rest of the world until a vaccine is developed?
Of course, scientists are saying that is quite possible that a vaccine will never be developed…
So we could be hiding … forever?
Oxford University’s Center for Evidence Based Medicine says yesterday that the outbreak of disease peaked before lock down and that social distancing and common sense hygiene broke its back – lock down added little. That analysis applies in NZ. Man of the year, or journeyman of the year?
That kind of sounds like hindsight ??
Oh you mean this mother of all cesspools Ashely Bloomfield who told us Northland parents there were no meningococcal vaccines for our 5-12 years olds during an outbreak in late 2018 but we find out later that he just didnt want to buy more from Pfizer. Public stocks would be too kind for what he deserves