From the government that is, which is not surprising, even with a Prime Minister with a Bachelor’s degree in the subject who has been lauded as a great communicator from the start.

The real problem is sooner or later you get a reality so ugly that no amount of communication – otherwise known as spin and bullshit – can cover up for it.

So, having saved us from Covid for 18 months, our government has just surrendered to the virus, announcing a “transition plan” to loosen restrictions while Covid is still spreading in the community. This is exactly the sort of insanity which has led to outbreaks and mass death in the UK and NSW, and there’s no reason to think it will end any differently here.

I’m just glad I don’t live in Auckland (and glad that there will still be a hard border to slow the coming shitshow’s spread to the rest of Aotearoa). But I’m also sorry for everyone who lives there. You deserved better than this. And you deserve a government which will keep you safe, rather than sacrificing your lives for a pack of greedy whiners.
…
Meanwhile, I guess Aotearoa’s days of being a “model Covid response” are over. The government has just decided to surrender to the virus, because they were sick of the whining from the Auckland business class. They’ve basicly become quislings for the virus, just like Boris Johnson and Gladys Berejiklian. And we’ll be paying the price for their cowardice in deaths and long Covid.

That’s Hard Lefty, NoRightTurn, who at least has the reputation of brutal honesty when his own side lets him down – which is often – although you should note the deliberate exclusion of Victoria from his list, thanks to it’s Lefty, Lefty, Lefty reputation and government. I guess he’s a fan of Dan Andrews, in spite of “outbreaks” and “mass death”. I’ll be interested to see how Chris “Wonder Woman” Trotter copes, given his recent, tub-thumping demands for Virus Justice.

But this is so typical of the Left; the mentality of waging yet another Moral Equivalent of War: that’s Jimmy Carter on energy in 1979, to go with similar outstanding successes such as LBJ’s “War on Poverty”, Nixon’s “War on Drugs”, and GW’s “War on Terror”.

The trouble actually goes all the way back to the original phrase of early Yank philosopher and “progressive” William James, who pondered how to…

…”sustain political unity and civic virtue in the absence of war or a credible threat” and “sound a rallying cry for service in the interests of the individual and the nation.”

It’s a crap idea, but the Old Left just can’t let go of it (Trotter on The Coming War Against Climate Change), for the obvious reason that all other means of persuasion have failed them.

The basic problem is that nothing outside of war can actually be turned into one, in either strategy, tactics or final victory. This is why you had Trotter weeks ago thundering against The Business Class “selfishly” attacking the brave elimination strategy and why we now have NRT moaning about “surrendering to the virus” (I know, right? These viruses are fanatics. Fanatics I tell you).

Yes, after firebombing Tokyo and most other cities into rubble and dust we need something else. Unfortunately the mRNA vaccines have not turned out to be the Atomic Bomb for the virus. We’ve nuked Hiroshima and Nagasaki and the little bastards still won’t surrender. Let’s look for other targets on which to unleash our rage.

Getting back to the specifics of what the government announced yesterday, let me return, once again, to what the Swedish epidemiologist said about lockdowns 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?

Like an alcoholic, Adern has now accepted the first truth that’s been obvious to most other non-warmongers for a long time now: opening up had to happen sooner or later and when it does there will be “the sad realities that come with it – cases, hospitalisations and deaths.”.

I’m not going to knock her for this, even if it comes awfully late into this brutal strategy. It’s a glimmer of light. What she’s actually doing is backing into the scenario explained in the Swedish quote; she’s making it clear by implication that although cases, hospitalisations and deaths are coming, that will NOT mean another lockdown. She appears to have finally reached a point where she’s not going to follow all the advice of her “experts”. Whether that’s because of political reality or not is not something I care about.

The fiddly, vague bullshit of “steps” is her technical “out” from the purity of “levels”, with L4 lockdowns and the crude rules of L3 and below. Hell, we might even be looking at L3 or such just on specific places like small towns or suburbs – which would actually be the track, trace and quarantine option that health authorities worldwide planned for epidemics before the insanity of lockdowns was embraced in 2020.

She’s not explicit about that. She can’t be at this stage, but she wants all her worshippers (especially the MSM) to get used to this idea and she’s hoping that the vax rate and reduced lethality of Delta will mean the numbers, especially the last two, don’t grow relentlessly.

I think we will see jumps in those numbers, but I don’t think it will be terrifying, let alone exponential growth leading to “mass death”, aside from the MSM’s “If It Bleeds, It Leads” hysteria. Personally I think that it’s a smart move (finally), even if the “steps” stuff is eye-rolling nonsense.

When it comes to communication this should not be forgotten either, because we shouldn’t rush to war.