I reckon we can, even though the former is currently on their sixth lockdown, while the latter is in its eighth week of lockdown.
Because one lockdown lasting eight weeks is just not enough to get the job done against the fearful Chinese Lung Rot virus.
Nor are six lockdowns:
Melbourne’s sixth lockdown is set to be extended beyond Friday as the state recorded 25 locally acquired cases of COVID-19 – 13 of whom were infectious in the community.
Of the 25 local cases, 21 were linked to known outbreaks and four have been deemed ‘mystery cases’.
Sunday’s COVID-19 numbers were reported after 32,286 test results, bringing the total number of active cases to 185.
Moreover there’s this latest piece of information about NZ:
This morning, Stuart Nash was on the radio saying this lockdown would have happened even if we are highly vaccinated.
…
That is not a surprise. If the objective is “COVID Free” we will be having lock downs even if we had 100 percent of people vaccinated. So he is just confirming that.Unless the Government changes its policy, we will be having lock downs for a decade, or the Government runs out of political capital.
So National might have a shot in 2023 after all and be elected so they can do … exactly the same.
I’ll just put this put there again from the Swedish epidemiologists in April 2020:
Getting out of the lockdowns will be the big challenge since the question is around which restrictions can be lifted, followed by watching for upticks in cases and deaths at each stage, with increases met by what? Reinstating the restriction?
The annual death rate for 2020 was 0.94%, compared to the average of 0.92% for the previous decade. Moreover the death toll is lower than it was in 2010-2012 and the same as 2013. I don’t recall any great wave of hysteria about those years.
If Covid-19 killed differently than Flu or Pneumonia we would have expected to see thousands of such Swedish deaths in 2020 as in other years, plus thousands more from COVID-19. That’s what pandemics are; additional deaths to what you would normally expect.
But I have to agree that in New Zealand our health care system is fragile. I was at lunch in Cambridge yesterday with a nurse who works part-time at Waikato to help them out. Her descriptions of overflowing ambulance bays, corridors and the like, with overworked staff, was pretty awful to listen to. One old woman fell out of her wheelchair, smacked her face and put blood everywhere. Given a compression bandage and told to hold it over the wounds. She did. For an hour. Nurses being asked if they can provide just an extra couple of hours at the end of their shift. The woman’s husband is a GP and he’s asked her why she keeps walking back into a burning building? None of this is Covid, but clearly it’s a fragile system.
It may be that this is just the Waikato DHB, which has had a poor reputation for a long time and which was badly hurt by the cyber-attack a few weeks ago.
But the NZ Left thought that the only thing wrong with our Public Healthcare system was that National had been penny-pinching misers who didn’t care if people died and that all that was needed was to pump in extra money. Minister Andrew Little is discovering the blinding truth about government bureaucracies :
Andrew Little is visibly annoyed by the problems he’s encountered in the health system since taking on the portfolio following last year’s election.
“We’ve put so much extra funding into the system since we’ve been in Government and the same pressures that were evident three years ago are evident now.
“So, what I’m saying is how can we possibly have pumped in billions of extra dollars, and it not appear to have made a difference?’’
It’s just a total mystery to you, isn’t Mr Little?
No Minister 
The question here:
Labour abolished National Health Targets faster than they abolished Charter schools
How the effing hell does Little know if things are better or worse for him wasting billions of our dollars on it?
Our hospitals are simply subject to the laws of supply and demand.
Anything that is free has essentially infinite demand. You either put a price on it or ration it.
Anybody but anybody can roll up to A&E, and they do with the most minor ailments. At after hours you have to pay, at A&E you just have to wait.
All that is required is a simple enforceable triage system.
In a building seperate to A&E you are assessed. Sir you have an incipient heart attack, come this way.
Madam you son has a boil on his bottom, a minor cut on his finger, a standard cough, thats a bruise, come this way Madam with Johnny, your expected wait time is 8 – 10 hours, would you like to wait or make an appointment at your local doctor’s.
From my observation a lot of the clutter is from lower socio economic groups..draw your own conclusions.
I disagree with your conclusion.
The pressure to increase the vaccination rate will be huge. To get to 80% plus within the next three months. Although there is a right not to vaccinate, that choice will have consequences. No travel on any airlines, and a large number of jobs will not be open to anti vaxxers.
I also reckon that no one gets into NZ unless vaccinated, and that includes citizens and permanent residents.
With all of that, Lockdowns will disappear, though masking won’t. In short Stuart Nash is shooting his mouth off. He will not be a key decider on all of this.
Always enjoy your posts Wayne, coming as they do from a point of near total ignorance about the disease, its spread, growth, its impact on humans, and the statistical learnings around the disease.
You my old son would have been an enthusiastic participant in the Salem Witch Trials>
So are you familiar with the latest data out of Israel and Ireland.
Dr Suneel Dhand of the UK may help you knowledge base, about a 4 minute video.
Have the vaccines been tested using the protocols required before being approved for general use by the CDC, Dr Mapp?
The answer to that is of course no = this is something that takes years to accomplish. it being a systematic approach designed to ensure the treatment is effective and does not have deleterious effects in the short or long term
In order to deploy them on the unsuspecting
publiclab rats “emergency approval” was sought and givenSo millions of people are being subject to an experimental prophylactic treatment, many being coerced into it and you approve of this?
I wonder if we will be seeing the equivalent of the Nuremburg medical trials in a few years because we are definitely well into Dr Mengele territory here with whole populations part of a noble experiment in Public Health by a bunch of mad scientists who don’t really know what they are doing
And interestingly enough this new treatment does not even seem to have particularly good prophylactic properties against the disease judging by data from Israel and the UK. Three of my kids have had this disease now, one of whom was “vaccinated™”. Same with a nephew of mine and at least one of the cases in the latest outbreak that sees us all confined to our homes until further notice
Why not go further, Wayne? Disallow such people from getting access to certain healthcare, housing, and so on and so forth. Perhaps a future National government could set up something like China’s “Social Credit” system.
I suppose I should not berate you since this is being driven as much by The People as by politicians like you, but I have to say that you disgust me.
Tom,
Spare the insults. You and I disagree on quite a lot of things but I don’t get into personal insult. Neither should you. Lift your game.
Because the implication of your “disgust” is that you think international airline travel is fine without vaccination, or that working in the health system is all ok without a vaccination. Ridiculous.
Spare me your wounded piety.
My insult was not given lightly, for the very simple reason that you’re not some troll like the unmissed “Snowflake”, “Judge Holden” or the likes of “Little Dorrit”, but a former National Cabinet Minister.
Because of a disease that, in your own words, is “slightly worse” than the everyday flu, and against which a vaccination of the vulnerable protects them, you’re willing to
coercescrew people into the ground with a complete nullification of their everyday freedoms if they don’t get vaccinated. Would you have done it for AIDS in the 1980’s? There were plenty of assholes who talked like that at the time.I have no problem with vaccinating people who must deal with the most vulnerable people; elderly and sick. But “large numbers of jobs”? FFS.
Disgust is merely the mildest word I am willing to apply to you on this forum: you probably deserve harsher than that.
If there are large elements of the National Party that think like you then we truly are screwed as a Western “Liberal” Democracy, for there will be worse things than Covid-19 coming down the track. Perhaps you’d have fitted into Muldoon’s world more easily than you thought when you “fought” against him, only the rationale being different.
Disgusting is the word that I will continue to apply to such proposals, and to the people who propose them.
To get vaccinated or not is a red herring in the end.
Nationwide lockdowns will continue regardless, because someone near the end of their life might die a little sooner otherwise.
Average age of death from Covid in Australia is 86 years old.
Average age of death all causes Australia 82 years old.
Explain that away Wayne.
By the way Wayne you dont need a vacinne passport to post here. Its a free speech zone and personal responsibility..do you qualify? I suspect not.
Tom you forget Wayne was a failed Labour Party member. From memory he failed in an electorate selection for Mt Albert for Labour, and then tossed his toys.
For some bizarre unfathomable reason National took him into the fold.
His pedigree is anti free speech, more Govt control in all facets of your life, wokeness,, and all the other hallmarks of the Left. If he had stayed with Labour he may well have been the most qualified person in the party, purely from having 3 law degrees. One would have sufficed though.