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April 18, 2020 8:00am by Kokila Patel

General Debate 18 April 2020

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PhilBest

From the latest “Spectator” Newsletter:
There’s growing frustration inside the cabinet that a proper discussion about lockdown (and its side effects) is not taking place and that too much is being left to government advisers with patchy track records. ..when experts disagree ministers ought to debate – and decide. Every day, data emerges to make ministers wonder if the lockdown is costing more lives than it’s saving. The number of patients presenting for both emergency treatment and heart conditions has fallen to half the normal rates in recent weeks. Cancer referrals are down 70 per cent, leading some oncologists to predict that extra cancer deaths will outnumber Covid-19 deaths.
There were 6,083 ‘excess’ deaths in the week to 3 April, but just two-thirds of them are accounted for by Covid-19. It asks if other factors are at play, and if lockdown is building up a surge in unmet non-Covid-19 NHS demand. (PhilBest note: lockdowns are expected to create a fall in excess deaths from causes such as accidents; so the true impact of “lockdown-caused mortality” is greater than the 1/3 overhang suggested there).
To prepare for the predicted surge in Covid-19 cases, NHS hospitals discharged patients en masse and emptied beds. But the Covid-19 models were wrong: the ICU surge never happened in the way that was predicted. Not only is the NHS not overwhelmed, it now has some 37,500 empty beds, an astonishing figure: four times more than is normal for this time of year. So what has happened to the patients who used to fill these now-empty beds?
We know where the knee and hip operation patients are: on a waiting list that hit a record 4.4 million before the crisis. Then comes the longer-term rise in deaths from undiagnosed or under-treated diseases like cancer and patients hurriedly discharged from well-resourced hospitals in the Covid-19 preparations and sent to care homes. This could be the next scandal. The risk is that by the time Ministers get round to properly debating this, much of the damage will have been done.
(PhilBest note: this commentary does not even touch on the potential effect of trauma on frail elderly people living alone; those with mental health issues; those with conditions requiring regular daily activity and/or therapy; the effect of “use it or lose it” conditions getting away on those suffering from them; and the effect of some “alternative”supplements and treatments that actually keep some people going, being non-available and deemed “non essential”).
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April 18, 2020 8:00am
- PhilBest
  
  Guess when Mark Steyn first published the following para?
  “…The appearance of the virus itself was a surprise but everything since has been, to some extent, predictable. Because totalitarian regimes lie, China denied there was any problem for three months, and thereafter downplayed the extent of it. Because UN agencies are unduly deferential to dictatorships, the World Health Organization accepted Beijing’s lies. This enabled (the virus) to wiggle free of China’s borders before anyone knew about it. I mentioned all this three weeks ago, but only in the last couple of days has the People’s Republic decided to come clean — or, at any rate, marginally less unclean — about what’s going on…”
  
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  April 18, 2020 8:01am
  - PhilBest
    
    Ans: It was in 2003 and he was writing about SARS….
    The more things change, the more they stay the same….
    
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    April 18, 2020 8:04am
  - Paulus Gnome
    
    The Chinese lie, cheat and steal.
    
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    April 18, 2020 8:34am
    - MT_Tinman
      
      The Chinese lie, cheat and steal.
      
      So do people of every other nation on earth.
      
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      April 18, 2020 8:55am
      - stewmar
        
        The Chinese lie, cheat and steal.
        
        So does our esteemed Government
        
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        April 18, 2020 11:13am
      - johnson777
        
        “The Chinese lie, cheat and steal…. So do people of every other nation on earth”
        
        However, the Covid-19 HOAX can be seen in the way Covid-19 spread.
        
        It spread to the whole world but jumped over the major Chinese cities.
        
        Train travel tells a story about Covid-19.
        
        It is obvious that the story we are being told about the Covid-19 epidemic is very wrong.
        
        Everyday 59 trains (32 bullet trains and 27 normal trains) leave Wuhan for Beijing.
        These trains carry between 600 and 1200 passengers.
        Let us assume that only 50 passengers on each train travel from Wuhan to Beijing.
        So every day 59 * 50 = 2,950 people from Wuhan go to Beijing.
        The virus circulated in Wuhan for roughly 40 days before the authorities took action.
        Therefore 59 * 50 * 40 = 118,000 people from Wuhan end up in Beijing.
        These 118,000 + those arriving by plane + those arriving by automobile, result in 442 confirmed cases of Covid19.
        
        Everyday 155 trains (103 bullet trains and 52 normal trains) leave Wuhan for Changsha (Hunan Province).
        Similarly, we have 155 * 50 * 40 = 310,000 people from Wuhan ending up in Changsha.
        These 310,000 + those arriving by plane + those arriving by automobile, result in 1,018 confirmed cases of Covid19.
        
        Everyday 127 trains (85 bullet trains and 42 normal trains) leave Wuhan for Zhengzhou (Henan Province).
        Similarly, we have 127 * 50 * 40 = 254,000 people from Wuhan ending up in Zhengzhou.
        These 254,000 + those arriving by plane + those arriving by automobile, result in 1,273 confirmed cases of Covid19.
        
        And, so on,….
        
        Over the same time period, less than 1000 Chinese from Wuhan arrive in Iran.
        
        Over the same time period, less than 1000 Chinese from Wuhan arrive in Italy.
        
        How is it visitors from Wuhan to major Chinese cities have an almost zero transmission rate?
        
        Yet we are told that visitors from Wuhan to foreign countries have a very high transmission rate.
        
        How can this be?
        
        http://www.preearth.net/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=15&t=1184
        
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        April 18, 2020 11:20am
      - Alacrity
        
        Thats alright then.
        
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        April 19, 2020 12:27am
    - artemisia
      
      China also lifted 600,000,000 of its citizens out of extreme poverty in a generation. If they took some liberties along the way, well measure those against 600 million actual people – workers, adults, children, elderly – no longer in extreme poverty.
      
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      April 18, 2020 9:23am
      - mikenmildagain
        
        You might like to consider whether people can be lifted from ‘extreme poverty’ without surrender control of their lives to a dictatorship.
        
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        April 18, 2020 9:43am
      - Crisplion
        
        That’s a false dichotomy. All of the democratic capitalist nations also lifted their populations out of absolute poverty – the just did it about 100 years earlier, without resorting to totalitarianism. In fact, the improvement in Chinese prosperity didn’t get going until they liberalised their economy, i.e., gave up on communism. There’s no evidence at all in support of the idea that authoritarianism leads to prosperity – quite the opposite in fact.
        
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        April 18, 2020 9:50am
      - Justitia
        
        @ artemesia: “Some liberties along the way”? The Chinese Communist regime have killed an estimated 40 to 50 million of their own people since 1949. Meanwhile South Korea and other Asian nations starting from an impoverished baseline leapfrogged China by embracing the free market and they remain well ahead today including in personal freedoms. China’s “prosperity” is based on providing slave labour to western multinationals, massive IP theft, and corrupting the rules of international institutions. Not to forget organ-harvesting of political prisoners.
        
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        April 18, 2020 9:58am
      - emmess
        
        Yeah, but how many people have they pushed into poverty, worldwide due to their covering up of the coronavirus pandemic.
        
        Perhaps between 1978 and the early 2000s, the overall direction China was going in was a welcome change from 1949 to 1978.
        But under Chairman Xi and for some time before him, they have definitely regressed.
        
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        April 18, 2020 10:10am
      - kowtow
        
        You must put that into context.
        
        The CCP thought it could create , without any mandate,a workers/peasant paradise and instead had a long running civil war , the destruction of whole classes of people , widespread famine , disease , and a huge amount of absolute poverty . This state of affairs in varying degrees lasted right up to the death of the great helmsman , Mao .
        
        The change only occurred when Deng Xiao Ping ,who had travelled abroad ,opted for a large degree of capitalism and a huge amount of over seas investment .
        
        “China” did not lift 600 000 000 out of poverty , capitalism did . And its still a totalitarian , oppressive regime .
        
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        April 18, 2020 10:22am
      - artemisia
        
        However we look at reasons, regimes, bad stuff, other countries – it is still 600 million no longer in extreme poverty.
        
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        April 18, 2020 11:00am
      - YesMinister
        
        Having 600,000,000 people is in itself, absolutely obscene. You don’t have to be a foamy lefty to realize that the planet’s carrying capacity won’t last forever, and that China breeding to the tune of that many zeroes is bad news for literally everybody.
        
        Wouldn’t surprise me if the government knows that, and covid is an attempt at population control. People don’t seem to be able to moderate their own appetite for procreation. Either mother nature or the CCP are going to step in along the way, and at this point, there’s barely a difference.
        
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        April 18, 2020 11:24am
      - ancient one
        
        It was economic freedom and the Free Market lifted them out of poverty.
        Not political freedom obviously but economic.
        The Free Market (Capitalism) is a methodology not an ideology.
        It works under certain conditions
        My new book explains
        http://www.informationlode.com/ttl/c1.pdf
        
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        April 18, 2020 1:45pm
      - backster
        
        Johnson….”How is it visitors from Wuhan to major Chinese cities have an almost zero transmission rate”
        …………Because right from the start all travel between Wuhan andthe rest of China was banned but International travel from Wuhan was not.
        
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        April 18, 2020 2:22pm
  - Simon
    
    “the World Health Organization accepted Beijing’s lies.”
    
    Accepted lies at best. More probably WHO so corrupted by CCP simply followed orders.
    
    Everything the CCP touches turns to shit.
    
    China is NZ’s largest export market – turned to shit. China largest export market – NZ’s biggest economic & moral failure.
    
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    April 18, 2020 8:50am
    - cmm
      
      The WHO appointed Robert Mugabe as an ambassador in 2017.
      
      That’s enough to tell you everything.
      
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      April 18, 2020 9:56am
      - cmm
        
        I take a downtick as an uptick for Robert Mugabe.
        
        There are some sick people in the world.
        
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        April 18, 2020 10:05am
    - Justitia
      
      @ Simon: we thought we were so clever in 2008 by becoming the first “western” nation to conclude an FTA with the PRC. In fact it is a very one-sided agreement. We gave away the shop on matters like land ownership and migrant workers. We accepted continuing quotas on our dairy exports while our own market was laid wide open to Chinese manufactures produced by slave labour which our own industries could not compete against. We were duped. Now we await the wave of Chinese “investment” (control) that will shortly arrive to buy up our remaining industries crippled by the China Virus, it’s imminent. This will be facilitated by our main political parties who have been corrupted by CCP funding through local front organizations. Too easy.
      
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      April 18, 2020 10:19am
  - freethinker
    
    10,000 Urns delivered to Wuhan crematoriums waiting for another 6000 bodies which will eventually appear as it becomes impossible for the CCP to hide what is probably 120,000 covid 19 deaths. Satellite images of fresh graves in Wuhan add credibility for the Urns and likely death count.
    
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    April 18, 2020 10:17am
- PhilBest
  
  It’s unfortunately often the way that leaders marked by soft-headed “caring” are actually incapable of understanding “how things work in the big picture” – they don’t get it about “the economy” and they don’t even get it about normal daily life for a population of people.
  One of C S Lewis’s most famous quotes is that the worst kind of tyranny is one “sincerely exercised for the good” of its subjects – it would be “more tolerable to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies”.
  
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  April 18, 2020 8:04am
- Suze Wainwright
  
  Might it gain more acceptance in some circles if this article were published in the Guardian?
  
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  April 18, 2020 8:36am
- Brian McDonald
  
  More brainwashing from Phil trying to make every cap fit all his theories.
  Meanwhile on earth, well at least a poll on FB with 48,100 replies to date on the question of 2 more weeks in level 4 or go to level 3.
  
  59% stay
  41% go to level 3
  
  In just a few minutes the stuff poll is now at 50k votes at the ratio is now 60% to 40%.
  Don’t know whether this link will work:
  https://www.facebook.com/Bridgette.Thomas21/posts/10158193279351670?from_close_friend=1&notif_id=1587165502885104&notif_t=close_friend_activity
  
  Here’s another interesting piece on the longer-term probability factors reasoned by some of those holding different views on the downward shift through the levels. 1 is the argument of how the medically or socially compromised to fit into a longer view of NZ society.
  
  https://www.msn.com/en-nz/news/national/data-isnt-enough-for-this-decision/ar-BB12NebY?ocid=spartandhp
  
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  April 18, 2020 12:15pm
  - PhilBest
    
    And as I keep saying: a people that thick deserve to lose their liberty. I think I’ll end up regretting not getting out of this country of idiot sheep while the going was good.
    
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    April 18, 2020 5:21pm
PhilBest

Ans: It was in 2003 and he was writing about SARS….
The more things change, the more they stay the same….
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April 18, 2020 8:01am
Captain Mainwaring

When will that dreadful old broomstick-rider Helen Clark just get the f**k away from making public comments?
We put up with her control-freak Prime Ministership for 9 years too long before she got the well-deserved arse card and we’re still not rid of the bilious old cow.
MSM, you have a lot to answer for.
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April 18, 2020 8:01am
- mikenmildagain
  
  Hidden due to low comment rating. Click here to see.
  Why so grumpy, Cap’n?
  
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  April 18, 2020 8:10am
  - Benedict Yu
    
    His comment explains why he is grumpy. Read it again.
    
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    April 18, 2020 8:24am
  - Paulus Gnome
    
    It is International Grumpy Day Mike.
    
    Happy grumpy day Capt’n, from Mr Grumpy to a fellow grump
    
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    April 18, 2020 8:37am
- mjw
  
  Hidden due to low comment rating. Click here to see.
  Did you get out of the wrong side of the bed this morning? Cheer up!
  
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  April 18, 2020 8:14am
  - mjw
    
    Holy hell, 37 downticks. Did all 37 of you get out of the wrong side of the bed this morning? Honestly, cheer up. Count your blessings. Cultivate a bit of happiness.
    
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    April 18, 2020 10:28am
- Benedict Yu
  
  Well according to this news report she is working day and night from her home in Auckland to solve the virus problem by working with “other global leaders”.
  
  https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/health/coronavirus/121079552/coronavirus-nz-podcast-trump-doesnt-have-a-clue-says-helen-clark
  
  “” I’m basically 24/7 at home working night shifts with meetings and conference calls around the world. And I must say, it’s not unpleasant to be able to sit in one’s rather nice Edwardian suburb of Auckland and walk the streets, which are quite pleasant at this time of year, and enjoy being home.””…..
  
  “She’s also been co-operating with other global leaders such as former British PM Gordon Brown to pressure the G20 and other international groups.”
  
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  April 18, 2020 8:21am
  - PhilBest
    
    This is scary shit. She isn’t working with the experts who are telling us the modelling is wrong and the whole thing is a sham? You can always predict which direction certain people are going to veer towards in a “crisis” eh?
    
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    April 18, 2020 8:29am
    - Liberty
      
      “This is scary shit”
      
      [Deleted – OTT abuse. Mod.]
      
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      April 18, 2020 10:07am
      - Liberty
        
        My apologies moderator and I will rephrase
        
        Our past leader appears to be on an international socialist committee of past leaders.
        Our current leader can join her when the COL loses the upcoming election.
        
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        April 18, 2020 11:31am
  - MrTips
    
    Brown wants a one world govt to deal with COVID. So does Clark.
    
    Imagine that. Clark for emperor.
    
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    April 18, 2020 8:31am
    - Nickc2
      
      Don’t hold your breath MrTips. If Cindy survives the next election, I’m picking she will punt up Helen Clark for the position of President for Life of the Peoples Republic of New Zealand. The Labour Party will then change it’s name to the Mad Hatters’ Tea Party and we peasants can then live happily ever after.
      
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      April 18, 2020 9:51am
    - tf78
      
      Clark also wants dope legalized to take our pain away of course.
      
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      April 18, 2020 10:36am
  - kowtow
    
    “She’s also been co-operating with other global leaders such as former British PM Gordon Brown to pressure the G20 and other international groups.”
    
    Like rust, international socialism , aka Trotskyism , never sleeps.
    
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    April 18, 2020 8:39am
  - Suze Wainwright
    
    What do we want?
    One World Government
    
    When do we want it?
    NOW
    
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    April 18, 2020 8:40am
    - KevO'Brien
      
      OWG — never.
      
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      April 18, 2020 9:14am
    - ISeeRed
      
      NWO?
      
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      April 18, 2020 11:27am
  - herb1
    
    So she’s in a [del. – mod] 24/7 with other discredited left wing ex leaders , still attached to the notion that we care about their opinions
    
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    April 18, 2020 8:52am
  - Loddenthinks
    
    I hope her neighbours complain loud and long to Council, the police and media about her making too much noise at night, like the hypocritical NIMBY does herself whenever anyone wants to hold something at Eden Park.
    
    Yes, it’s a stupid place to put a major sports ground, in the middle of the city. But it wasn’t anywhere near the middle of the city when they built it well over 100 years ago, and she must surely have noticed it when she bought her house with our money.
    
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    April 18, 2020 9:18am
  - pdm
    
    [Deleted – The comment was about Helen Clark – also, no abuse of politicians’ families please. Mod]
    
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    April 18, 2020 9:21am
    - pdm
      
      Apologies – my error.
      
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      April 18, 2020 10:01am
  - emmess
    
    How to trigger Clark?
    From what I have seen, since leaving for the UN, she has remained diplomatic.
    
    “We have a president of the United States who actively moves to de-fund and even withdraw from international organisations that he disagrees with.
    
    Disagrees with?
    Disagrees with?
    Disagrees with?
    
    Try, is an accomplice to the murder of hundreds of thousands of people.
    
    GFY Clark
    
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    April 18, 2020 10:16am
    - emmess
      
      I can barely stomach it but I am listening to Clark interview
      
      Wise and powerful advice from the WHO?
      Seriously WTF?
      
      The only thing have one thing to say to her is:
      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bqyLJ-fWbSI
      
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      April 18, 2020 11:03am
  - coge
    
    I’ll wager Trump enjoys far greater support in Aotearoa that the former PM does.
    
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    April 18, 2020 1:15pm
    - bruceavon
      
      I wish I could take that bet. Easy money. Firstly Clark led a government to three terms with sizeable wins. So you have to assume at least those on the left still support her and maybe some in the middle. the other point is many conservatives like me and many of my friends and colleagues think Trump is the worst president in our lifetimes.
      as you will know DPF has no time for him and I heard Michelle Boag who brought John Key to power as the leader of the National Party describe Trump as someone who she didn’t think could go lower in her estimation, but he has in this crisis. I don’t know any intelligent thinking political commentator in New Zealand who thinks he’s competent.
      
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      April 18, 2020 3:26pm
    - Classic Liberal
      
      Hard to tell. Everyone I know seems to think it’s almost obligatory to rant on about how stupid/racist/sexist blablabla Trump is. They base this on a few false headlines in the MSM, and not one of them have actually checked what he really said on those occasions. I’ve just given up even telling them they’ve been served lies by the MSM. Not worth losing friends over – TDS seems to be deeply engrained in the average Kiwi’s mind.
      
      But Trump can fight his battles, US voters do listen and can see what he has achieved, and he will win the next election.
      
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      April 18, 2020 3:31pm
      - mikenmildagain
        
        Trump 2016 : “I alone can fix it”
        Trump 2020: “I take no responsibility at all”
        
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        April 18, 2020 5:34pm
      - bruceavon
        
        mikenmildagain
        No. Wrong comparison.
        “No, I don’t take responsibility at all.” — March 13
        And then when his ego was bruised by the governors taking control . . .
        “When somebody is the president of the United States, the authority is total. And that’s the way it’s got to be. It’s total.” — April 13
        
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        April 18, 2020 8:26pm
- Stephen Russell
  
  Is it OK that Sir John Key makes public comments?
  
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  April 18, 2020 9:52am
  - emmess
    
    Depends whether or not if he is covering for totalitarian globalist puppets.
    
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    April 18, 2020 10:18am
  - Captain Mainwaring
    
    Of course it is. He has something useful to contribute.
    
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    April 18, 2020 10:18am
    - Joe Kerr
      
      If you mean his contribution to New Zealand politics in saying that his win in the election overrides public opinion such as in the referendum against asset sales.
      
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      April 18, 2020 11:16am
      - alloytoo
        
        Well given that he won the election with that as stated policy.
        
        Yes
        
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        April 18, 2020 12:09pm
- Michael NZ
  
  Captain
  Had to put up with…..
  
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  April 18, 2020 1:26pm
PhilBest

More inconvenient truths for the “we know what’s good for you” car-hating urban planning types:

http://web.mit.edu/jeffrey/harris/HarrisJE_WP2_COVID19_NYC_13-Apr-2020.pdf

The Subways Seeded the Massive Coronavirus Epidemic in New York City
Jeffrey E. Harris*
Department of Economics
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Cambridge MA 02139 USA
jeffrey@mit.edu
April 13, 2020. Updated April 16, 2020
Abstract. New York City’s multi-tentacled subway system was a major disseminator – if not the principal transmission vehicle – of coronavirus infection during the initial takeoff of the massive epidemic that became evident throughout the city during March 2020. The near shutoff of subway ridership in Manhattan – down by over 90 percent at the end of March – correlates strongly with the substantial increase in the doubling time of new cases in this borough. Maps of
subway station turnstile entries, superimposed upon zip code-level maps of reported coronavirus incidence, are strongly consistent with subway-facilitated disease propagation. Local train lines appear to have a higher propensity to transmit infection than express lines. Reciprocal seeding of infection appears to be the best explanation for the emergence of a single hotspot in Midtown West in Manhattan. Bus hubs may have served as secondary transmission routes out to the
periphery of the city.
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April 18, 2020 8:03am
Yvette

Who is on this working committee? must be about the 211th …

Since the country’s “life” depends on it, and more personally each of our individual lives may depend on Government decisions, isn’t it time that some information is given about who is advising the Prime Minister, and who is actually on the working committee making pandemic decisions?

I mean, for one example, we have only the vaguest information about the three political leaders’ outside-of-Cabinet horse-trading in the decision to ban all new future oil and gas exploration, with absolutely no industry input, consultation, or even the courtesy of full notice that it was happening.

I am old and have several co-occurrent medical disorders – so am very likely fucked if I contract cover-19 – but, with a certain self-interest assumed, I would still like to know altruistically that a sounder, more integrious approach is being made to the future of the actual populace, than the considerations given to so-called fossil (derogatory use) fuels, the thorough flax-roots planning and preparation for Shane’s bloody trees, or Phil Twyford’s precision of decisions in Kiwibuild.

Who exactly is making decisions about my life, and those of my family?
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April 18, 2020 8:03am
- kowtow
  
  Would be nice if our star struck MSM , you know the people who claim it’s their priveliged duty to hold power to account , would tell us who was at the other end of that crucial phone call that sent us into a panicked lock down .
  
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  April 18, 2020 8:43am
  - pdm
    
    Wasn’t it either Darren Hughes or his exercise ball?
    
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    April 18, 2020 9:23am
- Prince
  
  It would be interesting to learn about the cabals that are now making decisions about how we live our lives, but no one seems capable of uncovering that.
  Who are these people, what is their background ?
  Instead we are fed ‘news’ about some Pom journalist who admires ‘Jacinda’, or a three year old who wrote to Neve and got a reply, or a Jacinda facetime meeting that has ‘gone viral’.
  
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  April 18, 2020 8:51am
  - Benedict Yu
    
    The membership of the “cabal”, as you describe it is not a secret. It is led by John Ombler.
    
    The three other key people are Dr Ashley Bloomfield, Sarah Stuart-Black, and Brook Barrington.
    
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    April 18, 2020 9:34am
    - Yvette
      
      Benedict Yu, thank you
      
      But, OK, who the hell is John Ombler?
      Apparently John Ombler is “All of Government Controller”
      https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/national/412415/govt-response-to-covid-19-these-are-restrictions-to-save-lives
      
      Until today I have not heard of him
      Maybe I have been “sheltered under a rock” (oops) but see a reasonable news coverage.
      So why is the media portraying Ardern doing this whole deal so single-handedly?
      Why is she letting the media portray her doing this whole deal so single-handedly?
      
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      April 18, 2020 9:53am
      - Benedict Yu
        
        Ombler is the Deputy State Services commissioner. He ran the first few months of the response after the February 2011 Christchurch earthquake. The other three people are the heads of the EMA, DPMC and of course the director General of health.
        
        You would not have heard of them because they are not public figures. How many people could name the head of the Prime Minister’s department? Probably fewer than 1 in 100.
        
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        April 18, 2020 10:08am
      - Scooter
        
        Who’s considering the effects on the economy with all these lockdown decisions? Is JA just going along blindly and has no regard for the effects on people’s lives or the economy. It’s obvious she’s a one show pony, perfect for fronting crisis’s.
        
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        April 18, 2020 6:39pm
    - Prince
      
      I don’t remember voting for any of them.
      So when Ardern announces, eg, you can go surfing but you can’t go to your bach and mow the lawns, it is these three guys who have sat around deciding that ?
      
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      April 18, 2020 12:52pm
      - Maggy Wassilieff
        
        I don’t remember voting for any of them.
        
        You didn’t.
        They are long-serving Public servants.
        They work for the NZ Public by carrying out the policies of the Government of the day.
        
        If you don’t like what is happening, exercise your democratic right to put another Government in place.
        
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        April 18, 2020 2:51pm
Justitia

Why should we trust the Police with sweeping emergency powers when they condone lawless “iwi checkpoints”:https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/health/coronavirus/121091570/coronavirus-mp-asks-police-to-stop-illegal-checkpoints-iwi-disagree Why doesn’t the government intervene? Ardern is unfit to govern.
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April 18, 2020 8:05am
- KevO'Brien
  
  The iwi have no say except within their own boundaries.
  Police enforcing illegality does not make it legal. It means Police have ceased to be Police.
  
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  April 18, 2020 8:33am
  - Clyde
    
    The iwi do not have their own boundaries. The Police could have intervened to get rid of these rabble purely on the grounds that these thugs were congregating outside of their bubbles, or placing barriers on a public road. But they didn’t and one of the reasons is that the Police have twerps like Wally as a Dep Commissioner. I’ve not seen any politicos supporting this rabble, its a case of probably having something more serious to worry about.
    
    But I’m picking that maori will be lining up for yet more handouts on the grounds that they are vulnerable – they aren’t. This virus is not race-specific.
    
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    April 18, 2020 9:36am
  - Ruawai
    
    Animal Farm again…all animals are equal but some animals are more equal than others. You try and set up a road block out to say Pt Chev or the entrance to Pauanui and see how that works for you .
    
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    April 18, 2020 10:22am
  - Michael NZ
    
    yes the NZ Police have ceased to be our Police.
    
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    April 18, 2020 1:21pm
    - Justitia
      
      The Police hierarchy have been politicised. They are no longer upholding the law. Nor is there any accountability.
      
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      April 18, 2020 4:15pm
- Jules99
  
  If I was travelling up that way I would put my foot down and go on through. I’m not stopping on the road for a bunch of thugs wearing masks. I wonder how many people have done exactly that.
  
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  April 18, 2020 8:47am
  - Grizz
    
    They only stop one side of the road. If you were astute, you could probably drive around. If the police ask, you were just avoiding a hazard.
    
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    April 18, 2020 9:22am
- Grizz
  
  They have no authority to ask you anything and stop you. You have no obligation to tell them anything.
  
  They messed up in the beginning when they allowed their Whanau to return from the cities. Now towns like Kaikohe have covid, they would to better to encourage social distancing within the town, something the locals are very poor at doing.
  
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  April 18, 2020 8:49am
- Loddenthinks
  
  Matt King is on to it, and he’s a brave man for taking on the cuzzy-bros. All the excuses, justifications and clap-trap spouted in that article from those defending it failed to answer the single point that Matt King made.
  
  The checkpoints are illegal and should be dismantled at once.
  
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  April 18, 2020 9:20am
  - Justitia
    
    @ Loddenthinks: Matt’s a great guy, I have been following him for a while. He should be leader, now.
    
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    April 18, 2020 10:22am
    - Nickc2
      
      All credit to Matt if he can get the Maori Malitia roadblocks removed but really, it’s not his job to do it. The police should be doing this FFS.
      Where is St. Cindy and her ……… licking Police Minister on this?
      Come on people, get in touch with your MPs and tell them what they should be doing as your elected representative.
      e-mail addresses are at this link:
      http://1law4all.kiwi.nz/support-us/current-mps-email-addresses/
      
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      April 18, 2020 12:24pm
- emmess
  
  Police are behaving like in Britain
  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iSfxg9LVmY0
  
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  April 18, 2020 10:20am
- quarterpack
  
  These check points have just got to be a bad idea. There are endless cases over the years of serious harm arising from panicked drivers running over intimidating people standing in front of their cars. Shameful that the police can spend time threatening paddle boarders in waist deep water whilst ignoring this sort of thing
  
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  April 18, 2020 2:04pm
artemisia

Bold revenue moves will be needed and expected in the short to medium term. There are a few elephants in that room – including mining and the black / shadow economies.

Much mining could proceed in many cases with at least an equal emphasis on economic benefit until New Zealand is back on its feet.

The shadow and black economies – Dr Bryce Wilkinson’s 2018 report at the below link gathers together some New Zealand and global material. The net of it is that a lot of transactions are made under the table, including criminal activities, the latter black rather than shadow. Talking many billions of lost revenue each year at best guesses plus the flow on effect to government transfers (benefits and subsidies) as income is under declared.

Sunshine on those transactions would be a seriously useful not to mention equitable contribution to the NZ economy provided it can be done at least cost.
IRD has a large compliance team and some smart systems and recovers about $3 in tax for each $1 spent on compliance. A good ROI but could a different approach be better?

In my simple mind, it would be easy to change a few thresholds on existing systems to, for example, significantly increase GST and set a no-tax threshold on income tax. As was done in the previous government, this can be set at levels that leave the same amount In household pockets where income is legitimate. Other households not so much unless they stash their ill gotten gains under the mattress and never spend them (As if.)

https://nzinitiative.org.nz/reports-and-media/opinion/new-zealands-relatively-modest-shadow-economy/
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April 18, 2020 8:05am
- Komata
  
  Artemesia@0805
  
  MINING!! Mining!!! Did you say ‘Mining’?
  
  Quick, all gweens together, where’s Catherine when you need her, and Mark and Golly and those silly little university girls (who think it’s cool to ‘protest’) and all the remmers mummies and…
  
  And when they’re all here (and accompanied by our media friends) , we’ll get into our SUV’s and go for a jolly jaunt to Westport, or Waihi, or Karangahake (oops, already done that), and Macraes and even Stockton…. (But not Huntly; Too ‘Feral’ for us ‘Educated’ ones)
  
  Sorry Art, you’ve got no chance; the gweens control the narrative (and the media), and cute little fwogs, birdies and snails will ALWAYS triumph over economic necessity…
  
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  April 18, 2020 8:52am
  - artemisia
    
    The EPA got somewhat smacked in the last days of the last government by a new top appointment and a mandate to extend its decision to include a bit more economic benefit. The precautionary principle is all very well, but can be dealt with by rigorous safeguards while projects are in progress. And these have been applied by the EPA to approved projects, at least one of which has been the subject of recent repeated court challenges on behalf of the birds and fish.
    
    Those activists, undoubtedly sincere, need to front up to their newly or not so newly unemployed constituents and explain why stopping huge injections of funds and jobs into their local economies
    is worth it.
    
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    April 18, 2020 11:09am
MT_Tinman

Time for the people to tell the dictatorship to “Fuck Off”!

Relaxing the house arrest is not acceptable.

Remove it completely and restore Parliament to do the job it is elected to do.
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April 18, 2020 8:10am
- kowtow
  
  That’s why it’s important to not buy into the teddy bear/easter egg public displays .
  The Media Party use these as propaganda instruments as support for the regime and its tactics.
  They’re now pushing a 3 pm sing song , a pathetic aping of feel good look a’ me Eurobollocks .
  
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  April 18, 2020 8:48am
- MCos
  
  The house sits on April-28
  
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  April 18, 2020 10:57am
  - Nickc2
    
    Too F_n late!
    
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    April 18, 2020 12:48pm
mikenmildagain

Hidden due to low comment rating. Click here to see.
Happy World Heritage Day!
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April 18, 2020 8:11am
Poppa

So on Monday our glorious “leader” will make a momentous announcement on which level we will be at. I believe it should be 2

Let me get this into my head. Yesterday I believe there were 2 confirmed cases and a handful of probable. So lets be generous & count the probables and say 8 in total

I think if the same happens today or more than likely less Cindy will have a very hard job convincing anyone we have a problem.

I predict she will engineer a very convenient spike in the numbers either today or tomorrow
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April 18, 2020 8:11am
- PhilBest
  
  I am despairing at the numbers of contacts and online commenters who think these numbers are low “because St Cindy’s lockdown”!!!
  
  Even on Kiwiblog, we need to explain again and again and again, that if there was going to be an exponential increase in deaths from existing infections that we couldn’t know about “yet”, then the weeks of lockdown should have been accompanied by several deaths per day by the end of the first week, and tens of deaths per day at least, by now.
  
  That this didn’t happen, is proof that, as you say, we didn’t need lockdown at all. And our medical experts should be able to explain, from the science of virology, why NZ is so luckily immune. Otherwise I want to know why they are even regarded as experts. I’m not an expert and I can find the explanations with a few hours of Google searching.
  
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  April 18, 2020 8:35am
  - Alex13
    
    Yeah, all power to non-experts!
    
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    April 18, 2020 11:19am
  - Simon Gotlieb
    
    “I’m not an expert and I can find the explanations with a few hours of Google searching.”
    
    Exactly the same thing Karen and her friends have been saying about vaccines for years now.
    
    I’ll be treating your Googling the same way, thanks.
    
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    April 18, 2020 12:19pm
    - PhilBest
      
      I can find explanations for the real life outcomes here in NZ and the disparate outcomes from country to country. What are your experts models proven to have predicted properly? In any country, let alone NZ?
      
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      April 18, 2020 5:24pm
- Benedict Yu
  
  I am 100 percent certain that we will move to Level 3 and be there for at least 2 weeks. The “announcement” on Monday will have been drafted some days ago.
  
  Staying in Level 4 would cause riots. Moving to Level 2 won’t happen because all of the preparation within government is about a Level 3 move. It is a done deal.
  
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  April 18, 2020 8:44am
  - Tony Stuart
    
    Next weekend is another long weekend, with Monday 27th being a holiday in lieu of ANZAC Day, on the Saturday.
    
    The sensible decision would be to defer the change to Level 3 to 00:01hrs on Tuesday 28th April, and allow businesses to use next week for cleaning and restocking. I suspect however that we will go to Level 3 from Thursday of next week, as a number of people would simply ignore the L4 lockdown over the long weekend.
    
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    April 18, 2020 8:53am
    - Benedict Yu
      
      No it would not be sensible to defer. Thousands of businesses can be up and running immediately. Builders will be back at work at 0700 the next day.
      
      As for the long weekend coming up, people still won’t be able to go away for the weekend under Level 3. They can go for a day trip to the beach 40 minutes away. That’s it.
      
      35 1
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      April 18, 2020 9:18am
      - MCos
        
        According to Judith Collins the only difference is KFC will be open.
        
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        April 18, 2020 11:01am
      - Ruahine
        
        Thousands of businesses could have been open already especially the builders. Where I live there are at least new builds underway just sitting there. If it is O.K to pick kiwi fruit and to pick grapes it is O.K. to build houses and a lot of other job keeping employment. But Oh No let us waste $10 billion dollars instead.
        
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        April 18, 2020 6:36pm
    - Daphne Whitethigh
      
      Please dear god don’t let it be extended. Am in lockdown with elderly parent and haven’t seen kids or husband for nearly a month. There are quite a few women I know doing same thing for their parents. We’re keen to get home.
      
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      April 18, 2020 9:42am
      - Benedict Yu
        
        I expect your husband and kids are looking forward to seeing you again too. ?
        
        My partner was helping a friend in need in Queenstown and has been locked down there for the duration. She will be able to leave at Level 3 but it is not clear whether there will be any Queenstown flights. In that event I will be driving from Christchurch to Queenstown on Friday to collect her. Although as I read the rules I am not permitted to make that journey. Will be interesting to see if I am stopped at a checkpoint and told to return to Christchurch.
        
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        April 18, 2020 10:21am
    - Ruahine
      
      This way you make sure ANZAC day does not go ahead for this year also like last year. Another made up reason.
      
      4 1
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      April 18, 2020 6:31pm
- Nutta
  
  On the numbers and lack of evidence of community transmission, we should be back to a Level 1.
  
  https://covid19.govt.nz/assets/resources/tables/COVID-19-alert-levels-summary.pdf
  
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  April 18, 2020 9:35am
- tf78
  
  I’ve been saying that exact same thing for a couple of weeks – if she does lift it next week it will cost me $50 in a lost bet.
  
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  April 18, 2020 12:20pm
Luke Piewalker

Q. What happens when the money runs out?

A. Grant Robertson: 60% tax
A. Cindy: must visit more kindies
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April 18, 2020 8:17am
- KevO'Brien
  
  Printing the money will continue. Venezuela will become our buddy. We are a bit late for Wiemar.
  
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  April 18, 2020 9:18am
  - tf78
    
    Time to stock up on toilet paper again.
    
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    April 18, 2020 12:21pm
- freethinker
  
  Luke Piewalker
  Q. What happens when the money runs out?
  Labour runs away.
  
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  April 18, 2020 10:34am
  - Nickc2
    
    Yes, they deliberate throw the election and go to the opposition benches until the adults clean up the mess they created.
    
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    April 18, 2020 12:34pm
G152

Noticed the numbers of the usual death count in a newspaper obituary column as usually 30 a day.
The virus that keeps us all snug and safe behind walls (just like prison) has, at last time I looked, killed 11….
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April 18, 2020 8:21am
- SGA
  
  Hidden due to low comment rating. Click here to see.
  The virus that keeps us all snug and safe behind walls (just like prison) has, at last time I looked, killed 11….
  
  Is there any chance at all that the reason the virus has only killed 11 was because people were snug and safe behind walls? I can’t see how you separate that out.
  
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  April 18, 2020 8:45am
  - Evadne
    
    There’s little chance the lockdown is responsible for keeping it at 11.
    
    We’ve only been locked down for 3 weeks. Given the incubation time of the virus, and the disease progression (time from symptoms to death), those 11 most likely have been infected prior to lockdown.
    
    Any affect of lockdown will be seen in the death rates in 2-3 weeks time.
    
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    April 18, 2020 9:24am
    - emmess
      
      We ought to be almost be back to normal in three weeks, one week no cases
      
      Except for:
      External quarantine
      Hygiene PSAs
      Voluntary social distancing
      No mass public gatherings
      
      Should be there in Taranaki, Whanganui and Wairarapa already
      https://www.newsroom.co.nz/2020/04/17/1101216/covid-19-in-nz-the-numbers
      
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      April 18, 2020 10:26am
    - MCos
      
      The point of the four week lockdown is that infections will come to light in that time while the person infected is not out and about infected all and sundry.
      
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      April 18, 2020 11:22am
  - PhilBest
    
    Stupid people keep saying that, intelligent people gotta keep saying THIS:
    
    Even on Kiwiblog, we need to explain again and again and again, that if there was going to be an exponential increase in deaths from existing infections that we couldn’t know about yet, then the weeks of lockdown should have been accompanied by several deaths per day by the end of the first week, and tens of deaths per day at least, by now. There is absolutely nothing about a lockdown that waves a magic wand and makes existing infections stop in their tracks and not kill the infected person. Deaths occur 3 to 8 weeks after COVID-19 infection.
    
    That this didn’t happen, is proof that we didn’t need lockdown at all, it is NOT proof that St Cindy “saved us”. It is proof that she destroyed our economy for nothing!!
    
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    April 18, 2020 9:28am
    - SGA
      
      Not so sure about that, Phil. That presupposes a widespread infection to start with. If your initial sample was skewed towards a relatively low risk group (people young and fit enough to be travelling), then I don’t think that you would expect that same exponential growth in death rate if you curtailed the virus’s ability to infect more at risk groups.
      
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      April 18, 2020 9:55am
      - PhilBest
        
        So isolate the at risk groups! It ain’t rocket science!
        
        I also don’t think it plausible that NZ had any different profile of international exposure to anyone else; China is a major source of arrivals at Auckland airport several times a week. The countries with high death rates don’t have high death rates because their old and vulnerable travel a lot. They have high death rates because their old and vulnerable are living the wrong way in the wrong places, plus environmental conditions are optimum for viruses.
        
        I already commented elsewhere on this thread that NZ’s poor old and vulnerable people are suburbanized, to their advantage – I think your point is right in line with this – but our advantages were things we could have exploited well short of a total lockdown!
        
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        April 18, 2020 12:00pm
      - SGA
        
        You are jumping around here, Phil. I am talking about your mathematical assumptions, not policy.
        
        I’ve also been looking at places like Italy and Spain’s graphs tracking daily reported infections and those tracking deaths (nice big samples). Even if I deduct 6 or so days for incubation, then I can’t see the 3 to 8 week lags between the two graphs that I would expect from your model.
        
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        April 18, 2020 12:25pm
      - JackRabbit
        
        1) There are more and more reports through local grapevines of people that had a new “bad” flu late last year, and that had all the symptoms of Corona Virus. But like most people who get the flu, they took a few days off got over it. Some were in a bad way and sought medical treatment, but like any virus, had to ride it out. No-one knew about Covid-19 back then.
        
        Of interest, all the cases I’ve heard about, all happened in mid to late December; all were people who traveled overseas and in the case of overseas weddings, most of the wedding party got sick, and those related to those returned travelers. Overseas locations include the USA, and Iran
        
        2) There are now not publicly notified anecdotal reports of deaths in homes not reported as Covid-19 deaths. Either isolation deaths (elderly just gave up), or suicides – probably out of fear of Covid-19 or the fact we are now in a communist state and those old enough to remember WWII didn’t want to go through it again.
        
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        April 18, 2020 1:07pm
      - PhilBest
        
        SGA: I’ve posted this several times already:
        
        https://coronavirus.medium.com/how-long-does-coronavirus-last-6a6d436abccf
        
        You can’t guess from metadata on confirmed infections, and death rates, how long it takes symptoms to show and people to die. You have to go by individual case assessments. For example, known clusters involve a clear “date of infection”. I think the doctors stating the time frames that they can prove for individual cases, are correct. People are not dropping dead within hours or even days of infection.
        
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        April 18, 2020 5:28pm
  - Nutta
    
    Yes! Lockdown and Cindy have saved 80000, or 10000 whatever dodgy number model was rolled out to justify it.
    
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    April 18, 2020 9:37am
  - theoldbloke
    
    Lets get something straight.
    Covid 19 did NOT kill 11.
    11 people died who had been diagnosed/tested positive Covid 19.
    
    ALL of those who died had multiple health problems…
    
    We should be reporting that NOBODY died FROM Covid 19.
    
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    April 18, 2020 5:06pm
    - Batman
      
      Oh that’s bullshit OB. It’s clear to any sensible person that the virus degrades a person’s health to the point where they have complications and die.
      
      This is how it works FFS
      
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      April 18, 2020 6:01pm
    - Nickc2
      
      True OB! However, the truth does not sell advertising.
      
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      April 18, 2020 8:39pm
- Benedict Yu
  
  Yeah at least Julie Anne Genter will get her wish for fewer road deaths and injuries. ?
  
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  April 18, 2020 8:46am
- herb1
  
  Average daily death toll in NZ -99 .
  Average daily death toll World 153,500 which incidentally is greater than the total cover deaths
  
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  April 18, 2020 8:57am
  - PhilBest
    
    There are still countries where Measles outbreaks are more deadly than COVID-19 in Northern Italy. But who cares, those lives aren’t worth a cost that would destroy first-world economies, are they?
    
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    April 18, 2020 9:30am
coolas

Hidden due to low comment rating. Click here to see.
The old broomstick rider is highly respected internationally and has the ear of political movers and shakers all over the world.

What bitter sad old looser you must be to be so abusive to a great New Zealander – or it just because she’s a witch and not a warlock?
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April 18, 2020 8:21am
- MrTips
  
  Pretty sure Peter Doone, John Campbell and the NZ Parliamentary archives with her activities locked down for 50 years (one of the longest requested) could tell a different story about Helen.
  
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  April 18, 2020 8:33am
  - PhilBest
    
    Glad someone else remembers Peter Doone. One of the many things Vichy National didn’t do in 2008, was reinstate Doone and hold a proper inquiry. Now people wonder why our Police force is the paramilitary wing of the Labour Party?
    
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    April 18, 2020 12:02pm
    - Nickc2
      
      Thanks Phil, it was Peter Doone’s name I was trying to recall the other day in relation to corrupt practices performed by the unmentionable person who was once a Labour PM of NZ.
      
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      April 18, 2020 1:13pm
- Benedict Yu
  
  Ah no I would feel the same if she was a warlock.
  
  Do you have any evidence that she is on speed dial to influential people? Can you cite any public policy decisions of note that she has influenced since leaving the UN?
  
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  April 18, 2020 8:50am
- mikenmildagain
  
  Hidden due to low comment rating. Click here to see.
  Sadly, female politicians always face a certain level of abuse based simply on sexism. Marilyn Waring, Ruth Richardson, Jenny Shipley, Helen Clark and Jacinda Ardern have all experienced abuse of a type that simply would not be directed at male politicians. Terms such as ‘witch’, ‘crone’, ‘bitch’ are frequently used, as well as unflattering comments on their looks. Male politicians very rarely encounter pointed insults about their appearance.
  The only concession many old fossils seem to make to this trope is that very few of them make similar personalised comments about female politicians form their own ‘side’. Kind of a doubled-up hypocrisy there.
  
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  April 18, 2020 8:54am
  - KevO'Brien
    
    We no long test them by seeing if they float. Be thankful for small mercies.
    
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    April 18, 2020 9:20am
  - Maggy Wassilieff
    
    It is a standard technique used against any female since time immemorial.
    
    https://www.theguardian.com/books/2017/nov/05/mary-beard-women-and-power-review-modern-feminist-classic
    
    Not only are sexist comments made about looks, but also a female’s mind: e,g. she’s mad; it’s all in her head.
    
    Such a useful technique for shutting women up, don’t you think, mikenmildagain?
    
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    April 18, 2020 9:27am
    - mikenmildagain
      
      Lots of people have peculiar ideas, especially on Kiwiblog. Pointing that out is okay; attacking people for traits they have no control over: sex, ethnicity, disability, etc, is not.
      Of course, there will always be some people who pretend that being called out for their mad ideas is racist or sexist, etc.
      
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      April 18, 2020 9:47am
      - Maggy Wassilieff
        
        Thank-you for you justification of your sustained personal attacks against my sanity.
        
        So silly of me not to recognise that you were just “calling me out” and not indulging in bullying abuse of a new commenter to Kiwiblog.
        
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        April 18, 2020 10:11am
      - brett68
        
        It’s a systemic problem that, unfortunately, is rife throughout the National party.
        
        Age is mainly the problem, unless there’s an injection of new blood National will end up going the way of the Lions, Rotary and the Jaycees.
        
        I’m not a big Ardern fan but she’s sure got the under 45 demographic sewn up, can’t see any moving to national to be honest.
        
        The long term outlook is looking rather bleak unless major structural change occurs.
        
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        April 18, 2020 10:28am
      - mikenmildagain
        
        Well, I hoped that cleared things up for you, Maggy.
        
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        April 18, 2020 11:03am
    - KevO'Brien
      
      I never shut my wives up–good women, all.
      
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      April 18, 2020 12:20pm
- Prince
  
  People who have the ear of political movers and shakers all over the world don’t feel the need to tell everyone they have the ear of political movers and shakers all over the world and are ’24/7 at home working night shifts with meetings and conference calls around the world’.
  It’s quite sad really.
  
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  April 18, 2020 8:59am
  - Ruawai
    
    How does she find the time to walk around the block if she is busy 24/7 on conference calls?
    
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    April 18, 2020 10:53am
- Nutta
  
  What mandate does she have to make any political action on behalf of NZ? None?
  
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  April 18, 2020 9:39am
Tricati

Some pertinent questions
Why wont David Parker release Crown Laws position on government actions over lock-down to Covid Select Committee?
How come we get daily examples of health workers and carers not having PPE, yet we get the daily statements from PM that there are plenty available?
How come there are not enough flu vaccines for the elderly as reported nightly on TV News, yet we have both PM and Genter telling us there is more than enough?
Why can people go into a dairy (1 in/1 out) but not allowed the same access to the bakery or butcher? – We can even go into multi people supermarkets and have the same interface with cashier as we would in a dairy. Something is not right here.
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April 18, 2020 8:21am
- Tony Stuart
  
  Well said Tricati. What is it that David Parker and his Cabinet mates don’t want us to see? Could it be that the Government’s lockdown actually goes too far, in Crown Law’s opinion.
  
  Ah, those days when Jacinda Ardern promised to lead “the most open and transparent government that New Zealand has ever seen” seem so long ago. If ever there was an example where the public interest, or the right to know what Crown Law told Ministers trumps the Government using the “not in the public interest” defence, it is now.
  
  Release the document, Mr Parker!
  
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  April 18, 2020 8:32am
  - mikenmildagain
    
    Hidden due to low comment rating. Click here to see.
    We’ve been through this before, Tony. Whatever one thinks of ‘legal professional privilege’ ( a crock), successive government have been consistent in not releasing legal advice.
    Possibly I have missed any informed legal commentary suggesting that the lock-down ‘goes too far’. Please link to any you have seen. In the absence of same, please refrain from promoting this nonsense.
    
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    April 18, 2020 9:00am
    - Maggy Wassilieff
      
      Perhaps you need to look at some of the submissions made to the Covid-19 Epidemic committee:
      
      In particular those of Dr Tony Ellis (4)
      Prof Al Gillespie
      Dr W. John Hopkins (2)
      https://www.parliament.nz/en/pb/sc/submissions-and-advice/?Criteria.Related=inq_96420&Criteria.PageNumber=1
      
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      April 18, 2020 9:45am
      - mikenmildagain
        
        Thank you. I started with Prof Gillespie:
        
        In short, although there is room for improvement, the key liberties in times of an emergency in New Zealand have been, so far, well protected.
        
        Pretty damning, huh?
        
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        April 18, 2020 9:50am
      - fernglas
        
        I guess it all depends on your point of view. The rights preserved under the NZ Bill of Rights Act are subject to “justified limitations” which means that they can be abrogated to the least extent necessary for the good of society (in layman’s terms). Just because some Professor thinks they have been, or because dear old Tony Ellis thinks they have not, is not determinative, any more than your opinion or mine..
        
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        April 18, 2020 10:20am
    - Tony Stuart
      
      mikenmild – the “informed legal commentary” you refer to can probably be found in Crown Law’s epistle to the Government. I’d love to link to it, but I can’;t, because the open and transparent Attorney-General refuses to release it, even confidentially to the Epidemic Response Committee.
      
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      April 18, 2020 9:51am
    - Tony Stuart
      
      Have a read of the letter sent by Franks Ogilvie to the Prime Minister on 5th April. This letter, written in response to questions from clients, definitely questions whether the current situation goes too far. It begins thus:
      
      LAWFULNESS OF SOME FEATURES OF LOCKDOWN RESTRICTIONS
      1. We have clients who want our urgent advice on the lawfulness of some features of the lockdown restrictions.
      2. The questions are various, but they can be simplified. Essentially they ask whether the authorities can infringe New Zealand Bill of Right Act freedoms and common law liberties of the subject on the basis of deemed ‘essentiality’ of activity. In our opinion that test may have been given a role that is not justified according to the statutory purposes that must govern your exercise of emergency powers. Other criteria would more clearly and directly relate to the necessary risk of contagion associated with an activity, or the effect of the activity on ending the emergency.
      
      https://www.parliament.nz/resource/en-NZ/52SCEP_EVI_96420_EP77/90e7071bdb872fc91bdc4e8ef796765f09423024
      
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      April 18, 2020 10:00am
  - Ipanema69
    
    T & T, has anyone made an OIA request for the crown law advice? Legal privilege is one of the grounds under which information may be withheld but it is not absolute.
    
    In practice the chief ombudsman will quite carefully review any application and will apply the public interest test. Given that this advice was used to hugely restrict civil liberties in New zzealand I suspect that a strong arguement could be made that it was in the public interest to release.
    
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    April 18, 2020 9:01am
    - Tony Stuart
      
      David Parker told the ERC on Thursday that anyone who wanted the legal opinion released could go to Court.
      
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      April 18, 2020 9:49am
      - mikenmildagain
        
        First stop would be the Ombudsman, who is well versed in examining the balancing test between public interest considerations and withholding advice. Going to court would be for someone convinced that the Ombudsman had made an error in law in endorsing a decision to withhold advice.
        
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        April 18, 2020 9:52am
      - Ipanema69
        
        Hi Tony, I’m going to try the OIA route and the Ombudsman, Will give it a whirl. At least the Ombudsman is free. Cheers.
        
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        April 18, 2020 9:58am
  - Steve Otto(North Shore)
    
    Releasing the document will expose the lies we are being fed
    
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    April 18, 2020 9:02am
    - mikenmildagain
      
      No, it won’t. How do I know? Same as Steve’s hero, my gut tells me.
      
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      April 18, 2020 9:53am
      - Steve Otto(North Shore)
        
        So you admit we are being lied to Mike?
        
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        April 18, 2020 10:57am
  - Benedict Yu
    
    They are not releasing the document because it is legally privileged. Of course that can be waived. Parker did not give a reason. He point blank said “We are not waiving privelege”.
    
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    April 18, 2020 9:02am
    - Ipanema69
      
      Bene, yes Parker can state that he (or the government) are not waiving legal privilege. However as expressed above legal privilege is not an absolute in terms of the OIA. It may be used as a grounds for withholding information but the Ombudsman would consider it in terms of the public interest test.
      
      Admittedly the Ombudsman has in my limited experience set a fairly high bar to overcome but it is not absolute.
      
      The law gets quite complex on this point and I am not a lawyer. However these are extraordinary circumstances.
      
      I’d be very interested in a legal view? DG are you out there?
      
      Some time ago I was peripherally involved with a request made to obtain emails from a government entity. Some of the requested documents were withheld as they related to communications to and from the entities external lawyers. The grounds for withholding were cited to be legal professional privilege. Some of the documents were eventually released following the intervention of the Ombudsman.
      
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      April 18, 2020 9:53am
      - Benedict Yu
        
        Yes you are correct. And the ombudsman may still rule that these documents should be released. But if that happens the government will stall until post election.
        
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        April 18, 2020 10:15am
      - david
        
        Don’t forget that the Ombudsman agreed that we should not be permitted to view the Coalition Agreement with NZ First that currently rules our lives.
        If that is not “in the public interest” then I don’t know what is.
        
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        April 18, 2020 11:44am
  - Maggy Wassilieff
    
    https://pointofordernz.wordpress.com/2020/04/17/you-could-try-going-to-court-to-flush-out-legal-advice-on-police-powers-but-dont-expect-a-hearing-in-a-hurry/
    
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    April 18, 2020 9:49am
  - tf78
    
    An open and transparent government wouldn’t need to mention it is such. That should have been our first warning.
    
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    April 18, 2020 12:28pm
  - calendar girl
    
    …….. when Jacinda Ardern promised to lead “the most open and transparent government that New Zealand has ever seen”
    
    Ardern is not capable, realistically, of leading any democratic government of demonstrable quality and integrity. She is not bright enough to set out and define accurately her Government’s objectives and policies, she has a misplaced belief in her own leadership capabilities, and she believes that the general public will trust her overwhelmingly and accept wherever she she decides to lead this country.
    
    New Zealand is unfortunate to have Ardern at the country’s helm at such a critical time in its history. She’s no Helen Clark, John Key or bill English, is she?
    
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    April 18, 2020 8:34pm
- Poppa
  
  Funny that you should mention that
  
  I had a call from my medical centre yesterday asking if I wanted a flu shot. I said yes please & I am booked for Monday
  
  I have never had one before, so that suggests they are short of patients right now
  
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  April 18, 2020 8:40am
  - Nutta
    
    Had same thing. More likely that supply chain isn’t delivering vaccine to where it’s needed. Or that the supply available to distribute is variable.
    
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    April 18, 2020 9:43am
  - Gazza the Giant
    
    Not down here they bloody are not
    
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    April 18, 2020 10:30pm
- Benedict Yu
  
  Butchers and green grocers will still not be able to operate under level 3 unless they can organise home delivery or no contact collection. And most of them are not set up to do that easily.
  
  I went to the supermarket last night and the cost of meat has increased markedly. How surprising.
  
  https://www.mpi.govt.nz/protection-and-response/coronavirus/primary-sector-businesses-services-and-support-services/primary-sector-businesses-in-alert-level-3/
  
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  April 18, 2020 8:59am
  - KevO'Brien
    
    My wife ordered meat online from a supermarket competitor on Thursday and it was delivered on Friday. Good quality, excellent value–20% cheaper at least than alternative sources.
    
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    April 18, 2020 9:24am
    - Michael NZ
      
      Kev
      name and link!!!!!
      
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      April 18, 2020 1:12pm
      - KevO'Brien
        
        Mad Butcher CHCH
        
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        April 18, 2020 2:50pm
  - PhilBest
    
    Something I’d like to know, is where exports fit into this picture. Surely NZ food production is capable of feeding NZ itself several times over? There was a time when losing an international market meant that we dumped tons and tons of food at sea.
    
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    April 18, 2020 9:33am
    - mikenmildagain
      
      New Zealand is still exporting most of its food production.
      
      5 6
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      April 18, 2020 9:55am
    - Benedict Yu
      
      Exports of food are unaffected. Ships still operate and there is enough air capacity to still ship high value time sensitive food like chilled seafood.
      
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      April 18, 2020 10:12am
      - Ruawai
        
        I think continuing to export is a good thing but technically it is not as essential service yet the Government are allowing it, many inconsistencies in their rules.
        
        6 2
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        April 18, 2020 10:59am
      - reubee
        
        The ability to transport is relatively unaffected, but the demand for some of our goods is lower. For instance Air Chathams reduced its schedule because there was less demand for its goods that were previously being exported to China.
        
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        April 18, 2020 3:11pm
- DeepBlue
  
  It’s time to reinstate Parliament and normal OIA processes
  
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  April 18, 2020 11:32am
  - Tony Stuart
    
    Parliament will resume, with reduced numbers, on Tuesday 28th April.
    
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    April 18, 2020 11:35am
- MCos
  
  In previous years 1.35mil flu vaccines seem to have been enough. This year 1.768mil shot are/will be available.
  Not even enough for half the population because most people don’t want to fork out the thirty bucks or whatever it costs if they are not eligible for a free one.
  Every years 10-20% of the masses get the flu including a fair proportion of those who have been vaccinated because it’s far from foolproof.
  Pharmacy, or whoever buys these things, is never going to purchase five million, because at least half of them would be chucked out at about $10 a pop.
  
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  April 18, 2020 11:48am
Michael Rodent

An interesting article in the Financial Times which included a chart showing how much each country had closed down retail and leisure activity.
Leading the list was New Zealand with an 87% close down then France with 85%, UK with 81%, USA with 47%, Australia with 40% and Japan with 30%.
The revealing figures were the comparison between Australia and New Zealand – Australia has closed down less than half of what NZ has closed down and has had slightly better medical outcomes.
Maybe an indication that we would have obtained the same medical outcome in NZ without the onerous lockdown and the resultant detrimental impacts on the economy and people’s livelihood.
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April 18, 2020 8:22am
- Wayne Mapp
  
  Hidden due to low comment rating. Click here to see.
  My sister, who lives in Melbourne and is in banking, says the Australian lockdown (at least in Vic) is the equivalent of Level 3, maybe Level 3 plus in practise. Most shops are closed. A very large percentage of worksites are closed. They are staying like that for another month.
  
  I am presuming we will go to Level 3 next week. And hopefully Level 2 not too much time (2 or 3 weeks) after that.
  
  It would be a mistake to go straight to Level 2.
  
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  April 18, 2020 8:39am
  - MT_Tinman
    
    It would be a mistake to go straight to Level 2.
    
    Utter horseshit!
    
    The mistake was ever allowing house arrest in the first place when an advisory and support for those most vulnerable and a request for consideration, accompanied by actual closing of the borders would have been sufficient.
    
    The house arrest must cease immediately, the dictatorship removed!
    
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    April 18, 2020 8:50am
    - Wayne Mapp
      
      There is a very good real world reason why going to Level 2 would be wrong, and that is Sweden.
      
      Instead of dealing in slogans, why don’t you look at the evidence.
      
      The Scandinavian countries all went to Level 3 or Level 4. The one exception was Sweden which went for Level 2. The Swedish case rate and death rate is basically more than double that of Denmark and Norway, and four times that of Finland. Finland is bit more like New Zealand in terms of isolation, so has done better than Norway and Denmark.
      
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      April 18, 2020 10:16am
      - fernglas
        
        The problem is that the death rate is not the only metric by which the success of a policy should be measured. Consideration should also be given to levels of social and economic harm, but because they are harder to quantify they are largely ignored
        
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        April 18, 2020 10:26am
      - Wayne Mapp
        
        fernglas
        
        Agreed. So I would say Level 2 within 2 or 3 weeks.
        
        NZ probably saved 400 to 600 lives and Australia, probably 2,000 or so by taking the measures they did, using Sweden as a benchmark.
        
        The long term economic damage is the effective end of international tourism for the next few years, probably a 5 to 10% cut in GDP for NZ, plus knock on effects. Somewhat less for Australian since their economy is less dependent on international tourism. So in New Zealand that is at least 200,000 people out of a job in tourism and related sectors. Much of the rest of the economy will have less demand as a result. Many marginal businesses in areas other than tourism and hospitality will also fail as a result.
        
        It will take 5 years to recover.
        
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        April 18, 2020 10:46am
      - septic skeptic
        
        Finland is well worth keeping an eye on. It may be that their passion for Sauna is assisting greatly with their death rate. There are serious studies that show that raising and then lowering core body temperature can help boost the innate immune system.
        
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        April 18, 2020 11:02am
      - davidp
        
        >NZ probably saved 400 to 600 lives
        
        Which is, just coincidentally, a normal flu season. So we’re going to have a huge level of unemployment and poverty, with the associated health issues and deaths, to save us from a normal level of flu? This is insane!
        
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        April 18, 2020 11:11am
      - Maggy Wassilieff
        
        Another major hit will be to the education sector dealing with international students.
        
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        April 18, 2020 11:12am
      - Evadne
        
        Sweden’s current death rate SHOULD be higher than their neighbours at this stage – that is the whole basis of their respective policies..
        
        Its predicated on a normal curve. You can have high and short, or long and flat. Same volume (deaths, cases) under the curve – just in one model it happens quickly, in the other there’s a long tail.
        
        Sweden has decided to take the covid hit up front, hoping the economic hit is lessened.
        
        The others are taking the economic hit, along with a drawn out, prolonged covid hit.
        
        Suppressing the curve is about pushing the peak out and down, not eradicating it. Since they want to push the deaths out until later (hoping not to overwhelm the health system), you can’t argue it’s a success because the deaths haven’t happened yet.
        
        We’ll need to wait a year to see the “whole curve” mortality figures, not just the small slice we see now.
        
        Those that suppress the curve too much are modelling a second wave, or series of peaks.
        
        Basically, the current consensus is that the virus will burn through this year, ease off in the European summer, and come back next year for another round, to pick off those who escaped lightly the first time round.
        
        The only escape is the invention of a vaccine, miracle drug, or a locked-border siege mentality. Or just getting it over with in whatever way you can manage.
        
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        April 18, 2020 11:20am
      - Benedict Yu
        
        “probably a 5 to 10% cut in GDP for NZ, plus knock on effects.”
        
        This study predicts that reducing New Zealand GDP by 10 percent will reduce life expectancy by 1.4 years over many tears to come. The lives lost as a result will vastly outnumber the (almost all elderly) lives saved. It is utter madness. 1.4 years is a lot. It would mean that the “response” will wipe out, at least temporarily, all of the life expectancy gains of the last 15 years.
        
        https://croakingcassandra.com/2020/04/16/coronavirus-economics-and-policy-from-the-mailbox/
        
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        April 18, 2020 11:23am
      - DeepBlue
        
        Sweden should be shown on the COVID graphs in MSM
        
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        April 18, 2020 11:34am
      - Michael NZ
        
        2nd wave Wayne, 2nd wave…..
        
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        April 18, 2020 1:09pm
      - Goon
        
        Seems even the Danes are having second thoughts about lockdown:
        
        “We should never have pressed the stop button. The Danish health care system had the situation under control. The total lockdown was a step too far,“ argues Professor Jens Otto Lunde Jørgensen of Aarhus University Hospital
        
        https://jyllands-posten.dk/debat/breve/ECE12074246/vi-skulle-aldrig-have-trykket-paa-stopknappen/
        
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        April 18, 2020 1:32pm
    - Alex13
      
      “house arrest”, “dictatorship”…
      What a snowflake!
      
      6 1
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      April 18, 2020 11:32am
      - MCos
        
        There were more police hanging around Mangere Bridge before the lockdown. Scoffing doughnuts and sticky buns from the local bakery.
        Now I don’t know where they are, but I bet they’re just as pissed off as me. Parked on the side of a motorway somewhere with nothing to do except eat cheese and marmite sandwiches.
        
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        April 18, 2020 12:07pm
  - Prince
    
    You speak as though these ‘levels’ are some agreed scientific measurement, and comparable between countries.
    They are a hastily assembled, contrived powerpoint page to try to convey a semblance of order to what is basically a hodgepodge of contradictory generalisations.
    The one thing this Govt has been superb in doing is conveying, via a compliant media and captured thought ‘leaders’, some catchy phrases and meaningless platitudes…
    ‘Let’s do this…’
    ‘Wellbeing budget…’
    ‘The politics of kindness…’
    ‘Stay in your bubble..’
    ‘The most vulnerable..’
    ‘We’re all in this together..’
    
    I’m not buying it. Nor is Hone Hariwera.
    
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    April 18, 2020 9:08am
    - KevO'Brien
      
      So far we have been given scary statistical nonsense– the COL got the “advice” they sought from their admirers. NZ is fortunate being a small isolated island group. It is also evident that our incidence of serious risk is limited to the very old and a few others.
      
      That makes it fair to now ease the burden. There is little likelihood of hospital resources being swamped. The outcome for most who do catch the virus is nil. I’m in the high risk age cohort and would be happy to accept the whole community moving to level 2 or complete removal.
      There will be a probable immediate blip but do we want to delay that till next year and repeat? We have a measure of the enemy now and its not that bad. We don’t have massive subways or the cramped boxy rooming houses of elsewhere. NZ housing was built for healthier living.
      
      Lets face it together. Why prolong a living management problem too? Just because the Govt has given 12 weeks subsidy to many does not mean that that 12 weeks lockdown is needed.
      
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      April 18, 2020 9:46am
  - PhilBest
    
    It was a mistake to ever go to anything higher than Level 2!! Classic comment from Wayne “Vichy” Mapp. We didn’t lose the political war, we just nobly accepted that the enemy was right!
    
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    April 18, 2020 9:35am
    - KevO'Brien
      
      I accepted the initial lockdown when misinformation was rife. Now we have the measure of our situation here. The pockets are known and the borders better fastened.
      Go with 2 or zero now. The virus is not that bad. Many of the seriously endangered elderly are already in locked nursing care. We are well used to be careful each flu season as we do not know what is coming. I expect our hospitals will not be overwhelmed and regular services restart.
      Why hold the whole population in check for us or the few others that it will seriously affect?
      Sometimes cost has to be measured. People out of work or businesses being closed down permanently have enormous effects on future societal welfare. The quicker we can get the base situation restored the better. The longer we delay the more is being destroyed.
      Wealth is not wholly measured in money but opportunity too. It may be possible for a govt to substitute as an employer but they do not provide the spread of a vibrant free society.
      
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      April 18, 2020 10:05am
  - Nutta
    
    https://covid19.govt.nz/assets/resources/tables/COVID-19-alert-levels-summary.pdf
    
    Check the L2/L1 risk assessment criteria from the Covid19 documentation.
    
    Let’s do this!
    
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    April 18, 2020 9:45am
  - emmess
    
    Victoria had just one new case yesterday.
    
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    April 18, 2020 10:30am
    - Nickc2
      
      Victoria (Aust) authorities are corrupt! Like China, we shouldn’t believe a word they say unless we are witness to the fact.
      I don’t think I need add instances of their corrupt practices here, they are generally well known. Even last night, a couple of their AFL players went berserk in a drink driving rampage and guess what – no police charges. In Victoria, AFL players, union leaders and Labour politicians walk on water.
      
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      April 18, 2020 12:41pm
- SGA
  
  The revealing figures were the comparison between Australia and New Zealand – Australia has closed down less than half of what NZ has closed down and has had slightly better medical outcomes.
  
  When I had a look this morning, Australia’s medical outcomes didn’t look any better than ours (Aus 3 deaths per mill, NZ 2 per mill). Both, of course, are far better than lots of other places.
  
  It may prove, at the end of the day, that Aus did manage a better balance than us, but we won’t know that definitively for a couple of months probably. Even so, this is all uncharted territory for most countries – personally, if we are going to err, I’d rather we overcooked than undercooked (i.e., I was glad that my oncologist didn’t muck about giving me the bare minimum treatment that she thought was sufficient even though the side effects were horrible).
  
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  April 18, 2020 8:55am
- notreadyet
  
  Not quite as simple as that, you have another major influcing factor not accounted for, the slowness in really controllingbour boarders , otherwise we could easily have got away with same as aust
  
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  April 18, 2020 10:18am
Stu2

Sweden, the posterchild for non-intervention, continues to worsen relative to its neighbours.

Deaths/million (Friday figues)
132 Sweden

55 Denmark
14 Finland
48 Germany
28 Norway

Its test program has ramped up slower than three of its four neighbours

Tests/Million
7387 Sweden

14223 Denmark
8970 Finland
20629 Germany
24664 Norway

The shape of its daily cases graph is different – Denmark, Germany and Norway show an ongoing decline, Sweden does not.

Just how is this going to end?
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April 18, 2020 8:25am
- MrTips
  
  It’ll end pretty much the same as most countries. Sweden has a better death rate than: the Netherlands, Belgium, Spain, Italy, France, the UK and Switzerland.
  
  Its total cases line appears to be flattening.
  
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  April 18, 2020 8:39am
- PhilBest
  
  It requires time for the shape of the curve to be seen. Flattening it means there is a longer and fatter tail of deaths out into the future.
  
  Sweden’s equivalent of Fauci or Bloomfield is focusing on the right statistics: “mortality from all causes”, and “ICU capacity to spare”.
  
  All of those neighbouring countries have low death rates compared to “all nations” and excess mortality from COVID-19 does not justify the lockdown policies in any of them.
  
  NZ is an extreme example of this, but it is possible to have an order of magnitude more deaths than we do and lockdown still not be justified. Bob Jones is right, NZ is “the stupidest nation”, starting with the most “non-problem” of any nation and imposing the most destructive policy response. Michael Rodent’s comment above is the frightening reality.
  
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  April 18, 2020 8:45am
- Scott
  
  Stu 2 – what we do know is that the New Zealand economy is tanking, businesses such as Burger King are in receivership and thousands are receiving welfare payments. Apparently this is costing us something like $1 billion-$2 billion a week? This is unsustainable.
  
  We do all this because the Prime Minister egged on by the nervous young women that comprise our news media imposed this total lockdown. The cure may be much worse than the disease.
  
  What we do know is that the Swedish economy is not tanking and thousands are not dying in the streets. Give it six months or a year and let’s see where Sweden is compared to where Norway will be. I’m picking that Sweden will be roaring along while Norway will be in the doldrums.
  
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  April 18, 2020 8:56am
  - PhilBest
    
    And the ignored mortality “FROM lockdown” and from economic fallout certainly cancels out Sweden’s “disadvantage”.
    
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    April 18, 2020 9:37am
  - SGA
    
    Scott, this has been bugging me for a while. When it comes to issues like abortion and euthanasia, you come on very strongly about the sanctity of life. In contrast, here you seem more concerned about protecting your wallet than the elderly and vulnerable. I am having trouble seeing how you rationalize this.
    
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    April 18, 2020 10:40am
    - PhilBest
      
      Many political analysts such as Thomas Sowell and David Horowitz, have pointed out the divide between the two sides of politics that works like this.
      
      The Left always points to some “cause celebre” tiny segment of the big picture and insists utopian action be taken about it. When the Right points out that in the big picture more damage will be done overall by that focus, the Left accuses them of “wanting to murder” the subset. These are horrible moral dilemmas but it is possible to be the softest hearted and the most cruel in the end.
      
      There could hardly be a better illustration of this, than this current crisis. The Left shows themselves up as not only not understanding how economies work and the flow-on effects on society, they don’t even understand the direct impacts of policy on the lives of the millions of people who make up society. Indiscriminate house arrest can quite plausibly be, in itself, as deadly as a pandemic. Not everyone is robust enough physically and nervously, to handle it. Besides the Left not giving a shit about the destruction of people’s life’s work in their businesses (they’re just rich pricks, eh) they really are incapable of understanding “the vulnerable” they claim to represent. Look at the career paths of all the Labour and Greens Cabinet – they’ve been in Chardonnay Socialist echo chambers all their lives.
      
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      April 18, 2020 12:16pm
      - SGA
        
        Sorry, lots of words about “left” and “right” that don’t really answer my immediate question. I’m genuinely curious about Scott’s answer.
        
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        April 18, 2020 12:29pm
    - Michael NZ
      
      SGA
      You are apparently deliberately conflating two issues.
      One is the immoral killing of the vulnerable.
      
      The second is getting the economy going (or keeping it going).
      
      This underlying issue is the Lockdown driven by the leftie PM (holding out for her day in the sun on March 15th) causing financial armageddon.
      
      Wherein the poor and low skilled will be decimated by the coming breaking of the economy.
      The very economy that allows the said benefits in the first place.
      
      But you knew that anyway didn’t you?
      
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      April 18, 2020 1:05pm
      - SGA
        
        You are apparently deliberately conflating two issues.
        
        What are you talking about? If this disease didn’t kill people, then countries all over the world wouldn’t be wrecking their economies. Others, some here, are asking whether it is worth wrecking economies for the sake of a few (or not so few) lives. There is even a sub-conversation on today’s GD about the monetary value to put on a human life. I am not going out of my way to the relate two issues – they are related (whether our current PM is left, right, up, or down).
        I think that I am making a fair observation – the sanctity of life, that some here claim to hold so dear, seems to take a second place to their wallet.
        
        Personally, I had some attraction to the “herd immunity” argument as a long term solution (my reservation was an overwhelmed health system), but I have no track record of preaching against abortion or death with dignity, so I see no conflict.
        
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        April 18, 2020 2:56pm
      - PhilBest
        
        And if mortgage backed securities weren’t a certain path to riches, millions of people wouldn’t have been investing in them and government experts everywhere wouldn’t have been assenting to “the new normal” of money for jam…..
        
        This is a classic frenzy of the kind about which whole books have been written. You “missed my point” before about people of the left who just don’t understand how the real world works. Politicians of the Left like Jacinda just couldn’t wait to destroy the economy and create a Police State. Donald Trump on the other hand was pushed into it reluctantly and is keen to follow the evidence against it just as rapidly as he can. I wish we’d had leadership that was at least pushed into something reluctantly and was keen to follow the evidence against it. Rather than double down in denial.
        
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        April 18, 2020 5:35pm
  - Paulus
    
    I think you will find that Burger King has been up for sale for quite some time, long before the Virus.
    New Zealand was well into recession late last .
    The virus has made the path to destruction faster.
    My grandchildren and probably the next generation will have to pay for the debts being incurred by this Government trying to buy votes.
    
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    April 18, 2020 10:41am
- WaveyDavey
  
  You misread/minsinterpret.
  
  Death rates aren’t the issue but infection rate is.
  
  Given that we know what the hospitalisation rate of c19 the reason for flattening the curve is to reduce the number of people with c19 so the health system isn’t swamped which would lead to more deaths (people not getting an icu bed).
  
  Sweden has gone into this in the same way that you would approach any “war” ie there will be some deaths, it’s the nature of the beast.
  
  Currently Sweden’s health system is easily coping with the numbers requiring treatment and with room to breathe.
  
  It’s a country of grown-ups where, unlike most of the western world, it doesn’t have a fit of the vapours when people die.
  
  The only time we will be able to tell if the Swedish approach has worked will be several years after C19 has passed and we look at their total excess mortality compared to the approach of other countries.
  
  FYI currently Belgium is doing much, much worse that Sweden (4x worse iirc) and they are in full lockdown.
  
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  April 18, 2020 9:26am
  - Stu2
    
    There is a Vanity Fair article that suggests Sweden is essentially in partial lockdown – some citizens are practicing voluntary social isolation, and some are congregating in bars, cafes ….
    
    Makes sense, looking at how our clusters have grown everyone congregating would have caused more cases
    
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    April 18, 2020 10:06am
    - WaveyDavey
      
      True, but keeping a distance and being careful is nothing like NZ’s version of lockdown
      
      At the end of this, if everything continues we will have lost very few people but are unlikely to have a fully-functioning economy. Sweden will have lost more (it will be arguable how many will be excess deaths) but they’ll still have an economy in good working order.
      
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      April 18, 2020 11:11am
    - WaveyDavey
      
      Further, many of the jobs that won’t be coming back in NZ will be low-wage, low-skilled jobs. The people who were doing those jobs are not going to find work any time soon and they don’t tend to be the kinds of people that can reinvent themselves as high-value employees.
      
      A whole (and ever-increasing) generation of permanent welfare recipients with the attendant social, health, violence and crime problems that come with them.
      
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      April 18, 2020 11:17am
  - SGA
    
    Death rates aren’t the issue but infection rate is.
    
    This stuff is all very complicated and convoluted. Infection rate depends on testing rate, and Sweden has a very low testing rate (7000 per mill) compared to neighbouring Norway, say (25,000 per million). Sweden is reporting 4-5 x the death rate (139/mill) as Norway (30/mill) despite the fact that their infection rates are nearly the same. Either the Swedish are inherently more vulnerable to Covid19 or their infection rate is grossly underestimated.
    
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    April 18, 2020 12:04pm
  - Isobar
    
    Genuine question, how does the Swedish health system compare to ours? How is it funded and what are the other factors such as beds per person, sickness rates, operation rates etc like?
    
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    April 18, 2020 1:13pm
- WaveyDavey
  
  Further, how much is a life worth in reality?
  
  Do we throw everything we’ve got at 1 individual? We certainly don’t in any other area of health care.
  
  Now I’m picking numbers out of thin air here but:
  
  – We’ve burned through around $30bn so far, let’s be very generous and say we’ve saved 10,000 lives. That means each life saved has cost us (you & me included) $3m
  
  – If we pick a lower realistic figure of say 1,000 lives preserved then that’s $30m each. Simply put, we would not spend that kind of money preserving the life of a cancer sufferer for example.
  
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  April 18, 2020 9:34am
  - fernglas
    
    A life is worth $4.2 million. A year of quality life is worth about $150,000. Ask NZTA and Pharmac. Many of those dying have only a couple of years of poor quality life ahead of them, which years are the most expensive in terms of care. (The last year of life costs about a quarter of one’s lifetime total medical costs)
    
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    April 18, 2020 10:33am
    - WaveyDavey
      
      Thanks for the accurate figures, clearly I hadn’t remembered them.
      
      And for the downvoter- tell me the last time we spent millions on preserving the life of one single person?
      
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      April 18, 2020 11:09am
      - mikenmildagain
        
        Hard to say. As an example though, I would suggest the care for those seriously burned in December at White Island/Whakaari, the last of whom left hospital this month, cost many millions.
        
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        April 18, 2020 11:48am
      - WaveyDavey
        
        Fair point Mike.
        
        However… how many were covered by travel insurance? How much is repaid by their respective governments?
        
        Mind you we’re also pissing away multiple millions trying find ashes in a mine – that we’re unlikely to find anyway
        
        BTW, quick google tells me $2.6m for the White Island victims by the end of Feb – 30 victims means under $100k ea
        
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        April 18, 2020 1:33pm
    - PhilBest
      
      It is worth noting that our health system rations treatments all the time. People do die – I don’t know how many per year – because known treatments are too expensive for NZ to fund. We seem to have forgotten this in the last few weeks.
      
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      April 18, 2020 12:18pm
  - Isobar
    
    To be fair even if we didn’t have the health emergency the Govt would still need to pump billions into the economy due to the global depression. Its not correct to say that money would only be spent due to the nz lockdown.
    
    Unemployment would still be through the roof anyway due to the global situation and collapse of tourism.
    
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    April 18, 2020 1:17pm
    - WaveyDavey
      
      The $30bn is mainly in wages support. It would be nowhere near that amount if it was just tourism that was shut
      
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      April 18, 2020 1:37pm
      - Isobar
        
        As of yesterday the wage subsidy amount was $9.9bil
        
        So where does the remaining $20bil come from?
        
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        April 18, 2020 6:11pm
Maggy Wassilieff

Steve Elers will be upsetting the Maori Health academics with his latest opinion piece.

https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/politics/opinion/121061020/special-coronavirus-response-afor-mori-baseless-and-unhelpful

Why has the government allocated $56.5 million towards a special Māori response action plan for Covid-19?
…
If targeted funding is about helping people with poorer health and unfavourable social circumstances, then why not target all people who are facing those issues? Surely, targeted funding for people who need it is the right thing to do when it’s public money. This way, Māori who need the assistance will still get the assistance, and so will everyone else who needs it too.
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April 18, 2020 8:25am
- PhilBest
  
  Ah but the Maori gravy train upper class aparatchiks who don’t need assistance, wouldn’t get anything that way, would they?
  
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  April 18, 2020 8:47am
  - KevO'Brien
    
    There are a lot of hungry taniwha.
    
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    April 18, 2020 10:09am
  - Paulus
    
    I see that Marvelly has written her last article for the Herald.
    Bums rush like 199 others from NZME, many more will follow soon.
    
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    April 18, 2020 10:43am
    - Shaun the Sheep
      
      Every cloud has a silver lining.
      
      4 1
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      April 18, 2020 1:07pm
- Paulus Gnome
  
  Why are maori always a ‘special case’?
  
  The customary fishing rights in the far north, the blind eye towards John Harewira’s ‘information check points, the ‘threat’ of a hikoi on buses about some imagined grievance, etc.
  
  The usual brown mail shit
  
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  April 18, 2020 8:51am
- Jules99
  
  Looks like the money would be better spent supporting care homes for the elderly and ensuring that they have all the equipment and training they need to manage deadly infectious diseases.
  
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  April 18, 2020 8:57am
- Nukuleka
  
  I am perpetually puzzled by such initiatives targeted specifically for ‘Maori’. Does this mean that Winston, Paula, Simon, David S, Kiri te K, all the Maori doctors, lawyers, businessmen, MPs, my 10% Maori granddaughter are needful and are getting this assistance? They are all Maori like Steve Elers but obviously don’t require this patronizing racist nonsense. It makes a farce of such targeting. If it’s the poor that need the assistance give it to the poor. Don’t make a race issue of it.
  
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  April 18, 2020 8:59am
  - Suze Wainwright
    
    Yes, well I think you’ll find that they’re referred to as ‘not real Maori’ (in certain pale skinned progressive quarters anyway).
    
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    April 18, 2020 9:54am
    - PhilBest
      
      Careful! Andrew Bolt got done for “hate speech” in Aussie for describing certain white skinned activists as “not real Aborigines”! Yep, I’m not making this up. And yes, the Left does regard this right to today, as “proof” that Bolt is completely beyond the pale.
      
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      April 18, 2020 12:21pm
- Suze Wainwright
  
  And don’t forget – Maori and Pasifika are going to be hit way worse in the coming recession…
  
  https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/in-depth/414499/covid-19-virus-and-recession-a-devastating-combination-for-maori-and-pasifika?fbclid=IwAR2WPBLebJ2h5sLAWGAxIH2q75zaDvUQZE9aPYK7UEaGlyP21dUV97c8nvA
  
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  April 18, 2020 9:03am
  - KevO'Brien
    
    Massive long term job losses will fall hard on the Maori/Pasifika community.
    The quicker we are back in a working state the better.
    
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    April 18, 2020 10:12am
    - david
      
      Won’t make a scrap of difference to Shane’s nephews who are still on the couch.
      
      9 2
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      April 18, 2020 12:43pm
      - david
        
        memo to serial single downticker:
        you make your instructions transparently obvious. I suppose that is what she meant by saying she would lead “…the most transparent Government EVER.” accompanied by frowny face.
        
        Diddums
        
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        April 18, 2020 2:01pm
- Yvette
  
  So far breakdown of case numbers shows Maori who contracted the virus to be 120 of a total of 1409, so 8.52%, against there 16.5% population share, let alone the accepted bad statistics –
  like, The Māori population, when compared with non-Māori New Zealanders, are: more than twice as likely to die from cardiovascular disease, and 1.5 times as likely to be hospitalised for cardiovascular disease.
  
  Some Maori supposedly have extended family arrangements similar to the Spanish, French and Italian family structures, which, along with co-morbity poor health, accounts for many of their deaths.
  
  Maori, as the $56.5 million funding indicates, are presumed to be sitting ducks, who because they are as yet undecimated, appear to by sheer luck to have missed the impact that cover-19 was expected to have on them.
  
  Questions now are, Has the money already be “spent’ (allocated and committed), and, if not, should it still be used?
  
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  April 18, 2020 9:30am
  - WaveyDavey
    
    Yes it has, they’ve been back for more – week before last I believe
    
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    April 18, 2020 9:40am
  - PhilBest
    
    I’ve thought about that, and the difference here in NZ with our “most vulnerable” is that generally they are located in low socio-economic suburbs miles away from where the “vibrant urbanism” and global connections are. Every single “epicentre” is marked by deaths of elderly and vulnerable people who were crammed into unsanitary accommodation conditions right in the middle of infection-spreading urban activity.
    
    In the case of NYC, this is a consequence of “rent controls” that enable people to stay in place all their life even as gentrification and renewal is taking place all around them. It also is the cause of landlords not spending a cent on improving the accommodation. “Social housing” right in the wrong places is also a factor.
    
    NZ is now reaping a dividend from its decades-old experiment in remote “State House” suburbs.
    
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    April 18, 2020 9:44am
    - KevO'Brien
      
      Those State House designs considered reasonable health promoting space among inhabitant.
      
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      April 18, 2020 10:18am
    - Maggy Wassilieff
      
      The 4 cases here in Tairawhiti (Gisborne region) are directly related to travel O/s (2, and 2 close contacts).
      
      http://www.gisborneherald.co.nz/local-news/20200417/fourth-case-of-covid-19/
      
      There’s no evidence that our most vulnerable / lowest socio-economic folk have been infected (yet).
      
      But I do hate to think what their job prospects are going to be like in the coming months.
      
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      April 18, 2020 11:27am
      - PhilBest
        
        I visited one of those typical extended-family Polynesian households a few days before lockdown, and they were being very careful about keeping their old grandma safe. It was impressive to see the inconvenience they went to, given the lack of house size for the number of people in it.
        
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        April 18, 2020 12:24pm
- Unity
  
  I’m totally fed up with special treatment for Maori as if they are somehow different and more special than the rest of us. They are not as evidenced by the part-Maori who are decent hardworking worthwhile citizens getting by on their own efforts. The Maori who are in the negative stats are authors of their own destiny. They are too lazy to get out of their own way and just sit there with their up-turned palms playing the victims. It’s long overdue for us all to be treated the same with no special treatment based on race, but it should be based on need, then everyone who is in need can receive help.
  
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  April 18, 2020 10:03am
- Ruawai
  
  In this case more money should be given to older people, rest homes and anyone with low immunity not a racial group.
  
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  April 18, 2020 11:12am
- Surely Knott
  
  Yes. But the media don’t let facts get in the way of the spin. Newshub also ran this piece yesterday, “Maori Pacifica twice as likely to die from Covid-19 than Pakeha.” The article linked to *new research* that showed Maori were “estimated” to die at twice the rate based on factors like age and lifestyle and modelling those against overseas outcomes. While this *estimating*research might have been relevant a month ago, we now have actual NZ case figures based on ethnicity and Maori are underrepresented in coronavirus statistics. The newshub article was misleading
  
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  April 18, 2020 4:33pm
  - Nickc2
    
    The newshub article was misleading! BS the newshub article was a F_n lie. Ask newshub how many Maoris have died from COVID-19. Their answer should be none as nobody has died of COVID-19 in NZ. Those who have died in NZ, died with COVID-19 and what maybe contributing factors.
    What did Maori spend the $56m on that prevented them dying of COVID-19? Surely, that’s the question we must be asking in order that non Maori can be protected from COVID-19.
    
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    April 18, 2020 8:35pm
Simon

TDS widespread in NZ media. But nothing on China’s role, incompetence or otherwise in promoting Wuhan virus.
43 3
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April 18, 2020 8:40am
- igm
  
  Yes, it is noticeable, but when we have Little controlling editorial policy via his union thugs, they have only one enemy, that being capitalism.
  No matter what happens; to them US is bad.
  China can spread a virus throughout the world but they are not held to account by these irresponsible POS.
  
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  April 18, 2020 9:58am
KevO'Brien

A professor of molecular biology questions:
https://stream.org/our-heroic-efforts-to-stop-the-coronavirus-could-be-great-pain-for-little-gain/
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April 18, 2020 8:41am
MT_Tinman

Well worth the read

Some very interesting points NZers need to consider.
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April 18, 2020 8:47am
- Paulus Gnome
  
  ‘Don’t get me wrong, it is clearly a nasty disease, but it is not as nasty as it was originally thought. Unfortunately, the media have tended to reinforce the initial ideas about what this disease was like which have not necessarily been borne out by the numbers since then.’
  
  And that, with incompetence from an incompetent government, is the nub of stepping down to Stage 3.8 with KFC
  
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  April 18, 2020 8:56am
- jp_1983
  
  The author is a white male – so the eminent Dr Susanna Wiles will dismiss this out of hand as being Unhelpful white noise – because we must listen to her and only her opinions
  
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  April 18, 2020 8:59am
Happychappy

[Deleted – sorry, partners of politicians are not fair game for such abuse. Mod]
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April 18, 2020 9:03am
- Dougal10
  
  If they put themselves out on Twitter are they fair game?
  
  [Doesn’t make abuse of them here OK – it’s not twitter. Mod]
  
  4 9
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  April 18, 2020 9:33am
  - Happychappy
    
    So this is the sort of kindness and wellbeing that Jacinda wants people to think of.
    https://www.newshub.co.nz/home/entertainment/2020/04/coronavirus-clarke-gayford-defends-lockdown-calls-out-opinion-writers-suffering-cognitive-dissonance.html
    
    18 1
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    April 18, 2020 9:45am
    - Inandout
      
      As soon as I saw who was pictured I withdrew.
      
      9 1
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      April 18, 2020 12:10pm
    - Shaun the Sheep
      
      Newshub turns Gayford’s opinion on the opinions of others into a news story, then demands government funding to keep them afloat.
      
      6 1
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      April 18, 2020 1:14pm
Colville

Tuesday after ANZAC and we are at level 2 is my call.

Back to work Bitches!!
12 4
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April 18, 2020 9:09am
- WaveyDavey
  
  Those who still have work of course
  
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  April 18, 2020 9:44am
  - DeepBlue
    
    I agree. If Jacinda can say numbers from last Wednesday show no or little community transmission she will just need 1 week at Level 3 and then straight to Level 2. Her message will be ‘be good, be kind, stick with it for only one more week (all going well)’
    
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    April 18, 2020 11:42am
  - Inandout
    
    How true, WD.
    
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    April 18, 2020 12:11pm
Bobba Fret

Must be a slow news day

https://www.stuff.co.nz/entertainment/celebrities/121018395/laura-daniels-deeply-sorry-for-jacinda-ardern-cake-fail

A Jacinda cake!
14 1
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April 18, 2020 9:10am
- WaveyDavey
  
  It’s NZ, the default is a slow news day.
  
  It’s why the media love their disasters, real or imagined.
  
  One thing C19 has done is to have driven the killer asteroids/volcanoes/sharks/nazis on the front pages.
  
  Don’t worry though, they’ll be back before too long.
  
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  April 18, 2020 9:43am
  - Evadne
    
    We’re about due for Stuff’s favourite “what happens when the Alpine Fault goes” article. It’s been a few weeks since I last saw that one.
    
    Perhaps they could keep it on trend by writing “what if the Alpine Fault ruptures with magnitude-10 quake while we’re in Covid lockdown”.
    
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    April 18, 2020 10:10am
    - WaveyDavey
      
      You might laugh but that really was a question at the Day1 lockdown press conference – I remember rolling my eyes* at the time
      
      *might actually have been calling the journo a dopey c*nt
      
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      April 18, 2020 11:22am
- emmess
  
  The cake looks quite realistic to me
  
  11 1
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  April 18, 2020 10:36am
- Ruawai
  
  She openly says Jacinda is her hero, surely the MSM should at least pretend to be non biased.
  
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  April 18, 2020 11:17am
- Inandout
  
  BF, they actually allowed comments on that article..but for how long after the not nice Jacinda ones?
  
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  April 18, 2020 12:14pm
slightlyrighty

https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/?fbclid=IwAR3Rql88ZvQXNzbbFk1G8BHDJ10aIchzph3lGkUU27uT7-7TgLU6UF0lNJQ#countries

Forget the debate about who said what and when. What is done is done, and now we have to work to get out of the mess.

I have deep reservations about the ability of the current government to steer us out of the mire, but fortunately, this is an election year. Wider Social Policies mean nothing without a strong economy, and I believe that the best hope for the country going forward is a center right government, as I am sure most of us here agree.

However, I have linked to the stats of the death rates in the various countries, and it is fair to say that NZ, with a death rate of 2 per million, has done a great deal better than other countries. Germany has been highlighted as having dealt with Covid better than it’s neighbours, but has a death rate 25 times higher. The US is at 111 deaths per million, whereas yesterday it was at 102.

When other countries are losing the equivalent of a major national disaster every day, perhaps we should acknowledge that the reason our death rate is so low is most likely because of the measures we have taken.

When people moan about the impact of the measures taken, you have to remember that we, as an export led economy, were likely to suffer economically anyway. Tourism was always going to tank after this.

While other countries struggle to deal with patients overwhelming available resources, our hospitals sit at 50% occupancy.

This is going to be a long haul problem, worldwide. I have been reading a wide range of articles, not only about the economic effects, but also about epidemiology. I urge you who are calling for an end to these measures to have a close look at how other flu epidemics happened.

In the 1918 Spanish Flu, it was the 2nd wave of infections that killed 10% of the worlds population, and the highest number of deaths was among the healthiest population, as their immune systems destroyed their own lungs. We have already seen some of this happening in North West Europe, where more open measures appear to have given the Virus a foothold.

Fortunately, we have a far better communication network than we did in 1918, and far better medical technology. Our best hope is a vaccine, and this will happen, but we need to buy some time.
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April 18, 2020 9:12am
- PhilBest
  
  Intelligent people gotta keep saying THIS, even on Kiwiblog, evidently, where the average intelligence is higher than in, say, Stuff comments or Twitter.
  
  We need to explain again and again and again, that if there was going to be an exponential increase in deaths from existing infections that we couldn’t know about yet, then the weeks of lockdown should have been accompanied by several deaths per day by the end of the first week, and tens of deaths per day at least, by now. There is absolutely nothing about a lockdown that waves a magic wand and makes existing infections stop in their tracks and not kill the infected person. Deaths occur 3 to 8 weeks after COVID-19 infection.
  
  That this didn’t happen, is proof that we didn’t need lockdown at all, it is NOT proof that St Cindy “saved us”. It is proof that she destroyed our economy for nothing!!
  
  The factors that make Germany a success in European terms, are the same factors that NZ has in even greater abundance. I commented above that what makes a COVID-19 “epicentre”, is elderly and vulnerable people crammed into insanitary accommodation right where there is a high level of urban activity and global interaction. Plus, air pollution and environmental conditions that are an inevitability of climate. Even ambient humidity makes a difference, and NZ is supremely lucky with this.
  
  Germany is certainly not Northern Italy, and NZ is even less so. Add to that, that NZ has even lower urban density, even cleaner air, and it is summer here; sunlight kills viruses; and we don’t have the usual winter bugs going around that are actually what causes the pneumonia that COVID-19 patients actually die of.
  
  St Cindy didn’t need to even try to “save us” and she certainly didn’t “save us” – she’s done the exact opposite as will become clear when the accurate reckoning starts to get done.
  
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  April 18, 2020 9:54am
  - slightlyrighty
    
    It’s easy to claim this. But as you do, consider this.
    
    Contact Tracing and testing found that 1 person in Bluff infected 90 people.
    
    Contact Tracing and Testing found that one person in Matamata infected 90 people.
    
    If we were not in our homes, how many of these 180 infected people might have infected others? How did this disease get into the Resthome in CHCH?
    
    The fact that we have not had this exponential rise in deaths is one thing, but to claim that these would not have happened speaks to a level of prescience that quite simply does not exist.
    
    It’s one thing to look at numbers, but in other parts of the world, who carried on as you suggest, we are now seeing those exponential death rates.
    
    Sweden is a prime example. The Netherlands and the UK flirted with letting the virus run it’s course and allow herd Immunity to protect the greater population.
    
    Sweden now has 139 deaths per million
    
    The UK now has 215 deaths per million
    
    The Netherlands has 202 deaths per million
    
    Belgium has 445 deaths per million
    
    New Zealand has 2.
    
    You can argue what if until the cows come home. Hypotheticals are one thing, but these numbers do not lie.
    
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    April 18, 2020 10:19am
    - emmess
      
      Geography and seasonality
      
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      April 18, 2020 10:38am
    - kevn
      
      @sr… What happened to Italy in the figures you quote? They were portrayed as a mega crisis.
      
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      April 18, 2020 11:11am
      - slightlyrighty
        
        Italy is at 376 deaths Per Million.
        
        I’m not going to spoon feed all the answers. Some people should simply look up the data themselves.
        
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        April 18, 2020 12:41pm
    - PhilBest
      
      SlightlyRighty: I understand about “infections”. I see from your comments that you are thinking through the issues. So here’s the important difference for NZ. Those large scale infections all relate to a VENUE where the conditions for spread of the virus was unluckily optimal at the time of someone carrying the virus, being present. While one person infected 130 others there and then, none of those others have gone on to infect any significant numbers of others who have “ended up in the statistics”. This is what exponential spread would have been like; there would have been not a dog’s show of tracing everyone before it was too late.
      
      I suggest that expert HEVAC examination of those venues, given the numbers of people present and the ambient environmental conditions outside on the day, would tell us a lot. There simply has to be hundreds of NZ-ers who could have infected large numbers of other people. But instead of having, like Northern Italy, every second apartment block, and New York, every second bar and restaurant, acting as human petri dishes, NZ only has a tiny few. And even those are probably OK on a different day or with not as many people in them.
      
      Going forward, I think the best thing governments can do now, is stringent HEVAC requirements for all venues where people gather in close proximity. And abolishing urban growth boundaries and letting cities spread out again, and keep spacious housing affordable, also looks like a good idea.
      
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      April 18, 2020 12:37pm
- 2ic
  
  @slightlyrighty
  Why just compare us to the worst hit countries? Since you’re quoting statistics from https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus, here is a list of the 114 countries who (at the time of this post), have a LOWER number of deaths per million population (in :
  
  Yemen, South Sudan, Papua New Guinea, Uganda, Mozambique, Nepal, Chad, CAR, Vietnam, Sierra Leone, Laos, Madagascar, Namibia, Bhutan, Cambodia, Mongolia, Eritrea, Western Sahara, Rwanda, Timor-Leste, Sao Tome and Principe, Fiji, Guinea-Bissau, Maldives, Equatorial Guinea, New Caledonia, Macao, Saint Lucia, St. Vincent Grenadines, Seychelles, Caribbean Netherlands, Grenada, British Virgin Islands, Saint Pierre Miquelon, Greenland, French Polynesia, Anguilla, Dominica, Saint Kitts and Nevis, French Guiana, Réunion, St. Barth, Montserrat, Falkland Islands, Faeroe Islands, Gibraltar, Vatican City, Ethiopia, Angola, Myanmar, Burundi, Nigeria, Tanzania, Benin, Sudan, Malawi, Syria, Zambia, Libya, Senegal, Uzbekistan, Nicaragua, Zimbabwe, Mauritania, Kenya, Ivory Coast, Guinea, DRC, Haiti, Venezuela, Sri Lanka, Taiwan, Ghana, Gambia, Botswana, Somalia, India, Guatemala, Gabon, Palestine, Bangladesh, Hong Kong, Mali, Togo, Pakistan, Niger, Thailand, Jordan, Afghanistan, Cameroon, South Africa, Kyrgyzstan, Georgia, Costa Rica, Eswatini, Kazakhstan, Liberia, Congo, El Salvador, Paraguay, Azerbaijan, Oman, Kuwait, Suriname, Indonesia, Burkina Faso, Egypt, Iraq, Jamaica, Japan, Cabo Verde, Slovakia, Saudi Arabia, Russia
  
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  April 18, 2020 10:18am
  - amospicton
    
    Exactly, and why is it that these countries haven’t been worse affected? One would think Bangladesh, just to pick one, would be massively at risk. Why not? I don’t know but find it very hard to comprehend why this seems to affect modern, comparatively wealthy countries more. Any ideas anyone?
    
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    April 18, 2020 10:46am
  - slightlyrighty
    
    If you want to compare like to like, then you have to look at countries with a well developed infrastructure, and a high degree of urbanization.
    
    NZ has an urbanization rate of about 85%, similar to these other countries I have highlighted.
    
    We also have a much better reporting network, and a high level of inbound tourism. I doubt many of these countries you list are high on desireable destinations.
    
    Japan, Hong Kong and other similar countries, which have been far closer to epidemics in the past, I would expect to do well at times like these. Afghanistan, Yemen, Somalia, Palestine are great examples of countries that have self isolated by circumstance.
    
    India, Indonesia, Pakistan and Bangladesh have low levels for now, but should this disease gain a foothold in the poorer areas, we may see some serious numbers, however, it seems that this disease does not do well in warmer climates, where many of the countries you list are to be found.
    
    I have a distrust of reported numbers from other countries such as China and Russia.
    
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    April 18, 2020 10:48am
    - amospicton
      
      Good point Slightlyrighty – maybe climate does explain it.
      
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      April 18, 2020 11:26am
      - WaveyDavey
        
        There is a potential correlation between climate. It seems warm reduces the impact while cold and damp accentuates it.
        
        Warm and humid (Asia) doesn’t seem to be much different to warm.
        
        I guess those places that have a high incidence of respiratory problems are more prone to bad outcomes
        
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        April 18, 2020 1:41pm
    - WaveyDavey
      
      Whoah there “urbanisation” alone is misleading – pop density what you need to be looking at if you’re taking that approach.
      
      In the UK London is hardest hit – pop dens: 5,666/km2 / Akl: 1,300/km2 – see the difference?
      
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      April 18, 2020 11:28am
    - 2ic
      
      You did say “numbers don’t lie”, but as you’ve shown here it’s very easy to choose the numbers that support your argument and explain away those that don’t.
      
      “Lies, damned lies, and statistics”, as the saying goes…
      
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      April 18, 2020 11:31am
- bruceavon
  
  Yes. I don’t like having a labour government but I would rather be here than almost anywhere else in the world. Just been on some site that rates lock downs and ours had the highest rating. 100 out of 100. in the US Trump has encouraged citizens to protest being in lock down in some states, usually with democratic governors. So we have large mob gatherings of what look to me like the stupidest people in the world, not distancing at all, pressing up against government building windows in scenes that look exactly like a zombie movie. Meanwhile here everyone I met even at the local dairy seems to say hello and be entirely sensible. and we have stats that other countries can only dream about. So yes. Very glad to be in New Zealand right now.
  
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  April 18, 2020 10:39am
- DeepBlue
  
  I don’t think waiting for a vaccine is the answer. Even if one is developed in 12-18 months it will take a further year or two to make sufficient supplies … We can’t even make enough normal flu VAX for the world each season. Also this is a corona virus just like the common cold, and there is no vaccine for that.
  
  I think the quicker answer will come from identifying better treatment protocols, so that the worst of the symptoms are knocked back to reduce serious illness and death rates, eg to ventilate or not, to medicate with what.
  
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  April 18, 2020 11:51am
Tasman Terror

Don’t go swimming in Level 4 or there could be a lock drown.
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April 18, 2020 9:22am
- Gravelroad
  
  I found out today from someone who knits jerseys and other garments that you can’t buy knitting wool on line because MBIE decreed it to be a non-essential activity.
  Where do these MBIE people come from? What do they think will happen if shut-in people want to start knitting a cardigan – might they attack bubble inmates with knitting needles and use up ambulance time?
  
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  April 18, 2020 9:46am
  - PhilBest
    
    I heard an excellent argument from an American online yesterday. Instead of creating categories of “essential and non essential” how about we use “safe and unsafe” activities? The former is essentially an abuse of human rights, and needlessly destructive economically. Is the abuse of human rights and the economic destruction, actually the point?
    
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    April 18, 2020 9:57am
    - amospicton
      
      A point made earlier by David Seymour and parroted by Grant Robertson re Level 3.
      
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      April 18, 2020 11:09am
      - PhilBest
        
        David Seymour probably follows the right sources of political discussion where ideas like this come from
        
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        April 18, 2020 12:38pm
      - PhilBest
        
        And sadly, David Seymour is probably the only MP in the NZ Parliament who does follow such sources on a regular basis
        
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        April 18, 2020 12:39pm
  - chukar
    
    For Gravelroad –
    They are trying to stop the new Madame Defarge’s keeping records.
    (Tale of two Cities —Charles Dickens )
    
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    April 18, 2020 10:30am
  - Hollyfield
    
    I think it’s less about the dangers of knitting, and more about the workers who would have to process and pack the order, and the delivery workers all coming into contact with each other for a non-essential item. I’m not arguing the rights and wrongs of it, just giving an alternative reason.
    
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    April 18, 2020 11:33am
Chuck Bird

Should the advise now be that those over 70 and fat people should stay at home?

Obese and younger: Twice the risk of critical care

Doctors from New York University Langone Health, a large academic hospital system, performed a retrospective analysis of BMI (body mass index) and age of COVID-19-positive symptomatic patients. A BMI of 30 or more indicates obesity.

https://thenewdaily.com.au/life/wellbeing/2020/04/17/coronavirus-risk-overweight-young/?utm_source=Adestra&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Saturday%20News%20-%2020200418
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April 18, 2020 9:25am
- cmm
  
  This is a useless statistic unless they control for other factors.
  
  Blacks and hispanics are more likely to be obese, are poorer, are more likely to live in cramped housing and more likely to use public transport and, generally, have poor outcomes.
  
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  April 18, 2020 10:00am
  - SGA
    
    And BMI is a bloody crude ruler.
    
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    April 18, 2020 10:20am
  - PhilBest
    
    But New York is a bit of an exception. At least with the subways, the average rider is above-US-average wealthy. The big problem in NYC with the “poor vulnerable” is they are living in locations that long since should have been completely renewed, with the poor vulnerable being displaced to suburbs, even if they are low socio-economic suburbs. Those suburbs are a healthier place to be, period. It is just crazy to have rent-controlled crappy old apartment blocks within walking distance of Wall Street and Broadway, with people expecting to live in them until they die. Possibly it has advantages they didn’t want to forego, but now we’re seeing the downsides.
    
    By the way, mortality from all health causes is higher anyway at these locations.
    
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    April 18, 2020 12:45pm
- kowtow
  
  UK Daily Telegraph 17 April reports from the ONS for March deaths in England and Wales that “age ,comorbities and gender are the principle risk factors ” for c19 deaths.
  
  90 % of deaths are due to pre existing disease , heart disease is #1 but also pneumonia, dementia and chronic obstructive pulmonary patients are at higher risk…..
  
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  April 18, 2020 10:09am
- KevO'Brien
  
  It’s not the symptoms it’s the outcomes that are important. Flu dodging is an annual sport. cov-19 Seems a tolerable risk for most of us. The demented elderly are not that caring about it and most of their rellies could consider it a merciful release. The Grim Reaper visits all but is not always unwelcome.
  
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  April 18, 2020 10:25am
- WaveyDavey
  
  Perhaps men should stay at home and women go to work given the disproportionate numbers of men dying?
  
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  April 18, 2020 11:29am
oldfella

This turned up in my email yesterday. Not sure where it was first posted, but well worth a read.
**
Where Is the Sense of Proportion?
Apr 15, 2020, 09:00 am | Guest Post
Alex Davis

[Mod. Find a source and print a link, or make a summary. Too long for here.]
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April 18, 2020 9:36am
- oldfella
  
  Okay, here’s the link. Didn’t realise it came originally from the BFD, but it’s still worth reading.
  https://thebfd.co.nz/2020/04/15/where-is-the-sense-of-proportion/
  
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  April 18, 2020 10:19am
  - rouppe
    
    The bfd is compromised now. There is no confidence that whatever they write isn’t tainted by a paid campaign rather than being independent objective analysis
    
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    April 18, 2020 10:42am
    - Colville
      
      Its 3 elections at least since WO was worth a read.
      
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      April 18, 2020 2:31pm
- Michael NZ
  
  Thanks Mod.
  new people ehh?
  
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  April 18, 2020 12:49pm
I remember when

Ring from local Labour Party last night.
Are you “All Right”. Thinking they were going to apologise for the lockdown I said “Yes?”
Then I realized it was probably one of those poleing thingees they are so keen on at the moment.
I did spell that rite?
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April 18, 2020 9:36am
Grant

Well worth a read:
https://www.aier.org/article/well-that-unraveled-fast/
G
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April 18, 2020 9:39am
- PhilBest
  
  Indeed! I can’t say I’d seen the implications as clearly, from President Trump’s recent statement.
  
  “…The lockdowns were presented to us under the need to “flatten the curve” for hospital capacity, but there isn’t one curve and we didn’t have enough information even to say where one city was on any curve. There were some days of difficulty in hot spots but many hospitals in the country, due to the order that they not do elective surgeries, started furloughing workers. The reality of many empty hospitals in the middle of a pandemic was too much to process. So we spent the next two weeks searching for new justifications to keep the lockdown in place. Those started to sound affected and even fraudulent very quickly.
  
  What’s important about the three-phase process that Trump enumerated (on April 16) is that it FLIPS THE BURDEN OF PROOF (my emphasis). We have suddenly gone from a world in which governors have presumed that cracking down, forbidding, suppressing, denouncing, shutting down, arresting, and jailing are presumed to be good medicine, to a world in which we treat a virus as a disease to mitigate and the suppressors have to justify their actions or else face the wrath of their tens of millions of victims. In many ways, it was a brilliant move. In short, the hounds have been called off. Let us not underestimate what this could mean.
  
  Another important point about the three-phase plan: it is focused on the facts of the case. Not model-based predictions. Not someone’s ideology. Not political posturing. Not the fallacy of authority. The opening is based on the on-the-ground realities. The facts have never justified the suppression. Nor do they justify continued suppression for one hour more…”
  
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  April 18, 2020 10:04am
  - Michael NZ
    
    PhilBest you are on to it.
    Pity our pinkos here can’t grasp that. or refuse too….
    
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    April 18, 2020 12:47pm
I remember when

Things the Government should have considered:
Use of the business community to work on ways businesses could have continued to operate with reasonable safety.
Greater concentration on keeping covid-19 out of all pensioner homes/villages. How isolation of the vulnerable was organized.
Use of the business leaders to put in place ways for businesses to prepare for re-opening.
Been a little less focused on the daily total and more on the economic performance.
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April 18, 2020 9:51am
- Michael NZ
  
  Yeah but that is asking a lot from Jacinda and her team you realise…
  
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  April 18, 2020 12:46pm
cmm

Cook Islands covid19-free

Does that mean they will take their hands out of our pockets?

https://www.stuff.co.nz/world/south-pacific/121102013/coronavirus-cook-island-mamas-and-papas-jumping-for-joy-as-churches-reopen
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April 18, 2020 9:57am
- Ruahine
  
  That is good news.
  The Cook Island were obviously in quarantine.
  
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  April 18, 2020 11:55am
- Ipanema69
  
  Well great for the Cook Islands.
  
  However what is the plan now? Do they sit behind the moat for the next 1-2 years waiting for a vaccine (which may not arrive).
  
  Its not feasible to maintain this level of isolation without absolutely destroying their tourism industry which is their biggest single source of foreign exchange.
  
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  April 18, 2020 12:33pm
  - Colville
    
    Do we get to holiday there anytime soon?
    
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    April 18, 2020 2:33pm
Yvette

Hydroxychloroquine
In an email, a family member mentions –
I have the news on in the background and I hear that Donald Trump suggesting everyone take hydroxychloroquine and anti-malarial medication which is also used for rheumatoid arthritis. I take it and have done for the last two years. Nobody seems to be mentioning that it has a pretty major side effect: it can make you go blind ! You are not given it unless you sign a legal declaration saying you will have a baseline optometrist test and then annual tests, but good old Donald.

Oddly, Google does not seem to readily come up with this, but says side effects may include –
headache; dizziness, ringing in your ears; nausea, vomiting, stomach pain; loss of appetite, weight loss; mood changes, feeling nervous or irritable; skin rash or itching; or hair loss.
and an urge to assassinate Donald Trump?

Also –Hydroxychloroquine suppresses the immune system and should not be combined with drugs that also suppress the immune system or live vaccines. – oops
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April 18, 2020 9:59am
- PhilBest
  
  The opponents are right, that people shouldn’t be allowed to just go crazy and self-treat with this drug. But the whole point of defeating COVID-19 with it, is that patients in ICU’s are administered it under careful monitoring conditions. Even the use of ventilators is something that the experts are working out as they go, COVID-19 patients were probably being offed by the wrong air pressure in the early days!
  
  There is no point in taking this drug other than if you become one of the 3% or so of severe cases, needing hospitalization. Otherwise it’s just a typical ride-it-out flu.
  
  Millions of people taking that drug for Malaria around the world, are risking those side effects knowingly and willingly.
  
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  April 18, 2020 10:10am
  - Michael NZ
    
    The French Doctor using hydroxy, Zinc and a antibiotic on his patients is doing it scientifically….
    
    he thinks it’s best effects are in early to medium stages.
    
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    April 18, 2020 12:42pm
- cmm
  
  That is bullshit.
  
  Trump never said everyone should take HCQ.
  
  What he said is that it might be a cure. Something like saying it looks like a “game changer”.
  
  All drugs, even completely uncontrolled herbal teas or asprin you can buy in the supermarket, have side effects and interfere with other drugs.
  
  HCQ has side effects too, but it is well understood after being used for over 50 years. Tens of billions of doses of HCQ have been used in that time.
  
  Yes, the side effects can be severe, but so are the potential side effects for all meds.
  
  The reason you should not combine with live vaccines is because it will kill the vaccine because it sees the vaccine as a viral invasion (which is exactly what a live vaccine is).
  
  Again, that is nothing special about HCQ. Many drugs interact badly and interfere with the actions of other drugs.
  
  For example anything high in vitamin K (even too much leefy greens) can interfere with Warfarin (the blood thinner).
  
  I am on thyroid meds and some heart meds. They are very careful about how much thyroid meds they are giving me in case they interfere with the heart meds. They have discontinued one of my heart meds because of bad side effects.
  
  The medical system has been dealing with the cost/benefit of using drugs and dealing with side effects for centuries now. It is ridiculous to get worried about them using a well known, and relatively benign, drug like HCQ.
  
  But Trump said something about it, so everyone is losing their shit.
  
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  April 18, 2020 10:34am
  - mikenmildagain
    
    Trump, as usual, was rambling about a subject of which he knows nothing.
    I heard a rational discussion yesterday about trials under way, including for HCQ. In short, it is one of a number of treatments that may show promise. But without proper clinical testing, nothing can be said about its efficacy, safety, or correct dosage.
    To blindly promote a particulr drug or treatment method without evidence is simply magical thinking.
    
    Interview with Professor Richard Beasley, Medical Research Institute of New Zealand:
    https://www.rnz.co.nz/national/programmes/ninetonoon/audio/2018743031/nz-researchers-trialling-covid-19-drug-treatment-options
    
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    April 18, 2020 11:17am
    - cmm
      
      Did he actually promote it? Did he actually tell people to use it?
      
      From what I have seen, all he did was said something along the lines of “hey this might be a game changer”.
      
      But since then it has been rehashed so many times in the media that you’d swear some people think Trump wants to put people in FEMA camps and force HCQ down their throats.
      
      He didn’t dream this up in the shower, but was referring to some, albeit limited, research.
      
      Meanwhile other people are saying stuff like maybe ARVs and TB drugs will help, also on limited research. Nobody is going nuts about that.
      
      And those drugs have side effects lists as long as your arm.
      
      This is somewhat disappointing as a whole raft of people seem to be blinded by their obsession with Orange Man Bad, going on out of proportion rants about side effects, rather than investigate the potential benefits to be had from malarial drugs.
      
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      April 18, 2020 12:28pm
      - Michael NZ
        
        CMN
        I love TDS, it shows me who the arseholes are and believe me, there are 100’s of them, right here in Wellington.
        Hundreds yet 6000kms away from USA!
        
        and they sometimes seem so nice at first…
        Some of them are even degree educated and high functioning people too.
        male and female equally.
        
        I suspect it is a mental disease to be frank.
        
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        April 18, 2020 12:39pm
      - mikenmildagain
        
        Here is the dotard-in-chief on 19 March:
        
        Now, a drug called chloroquine — and some people would add to it “hydroxy-.” Hydroxychloroquine. So chloroquine or hydroxychloroquine. Now, this is a common malaria drug. It is also a drug used for strong arthritis. If somebody has pretty serious arthritis, also uses this in a somewhat different form. But it is known as a malaria drug, and it’s been around for a long time and it’s very powerful. But the nice part is, it’s been around for a long time, so we know that if it — if things don’t go as planned, it’s not going to kill anybody.
        
        When you go with a brand-new drug, you don’t know that that’s going to happen. You have to see and you have to go — long test. But this has been used in different forms — very powerful drug — in different forms. And it’s shown very encouraging — very, very encouraging early results. And we’re going to be able to make that drug available almost immediately. And that’s where the FDA has been so great. They — they’ve gone through the approval process; it’s been approved. And they did it — they took it down from many, many months to immediate. So we’re going to be able to make that drug available by prescription or states.
        
        https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefings-statements/remarks-president-trump-vice-president-pence-members-coronavirus-task-force-press-briefing-6/
        So yes, he didn’t actually tell people to use it. And ever since, his moronic defenders, even here, have been touting this drug as some kind of miracle cure, talking up all the anecdata that they can scrape out of the internet.
        
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        April 18, 2020 1:32pm
      - cmm
        
        I’m not too sure who here is saying it is a miracle cure, and if they are I don’t that is just because Trump said something about it.
        
        The comments I’ve seen here about HCQ seem more of the “hey look, maybe there’s something interesting happening here”.
        
        I could not see anything wrong in what he said. As he said, it is a well understood and well known drug after 50 years of use and millions of people taking it daily for long periods.
        
        That makes it safe as a drug, just as he said.
        
        Note that, by saying it is “safe as a drug” I do not mean that it is safe to just chomp them like lollies. What I mean is that the drug is well understood and it is safe to use within a proper medical framework.
        
        Asprin is a safe drug because it too is well understood and has been used for over 100 years. However it too has nasty side effects if used incorrectly.
        
        It is not some new experimental drug that is unknown and has unknown side effects. That would be an unsafe drug.
        
        Nor is it a drug like warfarin where people need tests every few weeks to ensure the side effects are not nobbling them badly. That is a borderline safe drug where it is safe to use if surrounded by regular test regimes etc.
        
        But no, Trump said something and whatever he said needs to be distorted into Orange Man Bad, throwing the baby out with the bathwater.
        
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        April 18, 2020 2:17pm
      - mikenmildagain
        
        Tell that to 23 downtickers, who I am super sure listened to Prof Beasley’s comments
        
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        April 18, 2020 3:15pm
  - Michael NZ
    
    you are on to it CMN.
    
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    April 18, 2020 12:40pm
  - Nickc2
    
    Thank you! Some people believe what they read in the Herald and don’t fact check. If the Herald and/or Stuff went tits up, I for one wouldn’t shed a tear that’s for sure.
    
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    April 18, 2020 1:45pm
    - cmm
      
      I’d dance in the streets. If both went TU, I’d dance in the street naked.
      
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      April 18, 2020 2:19pm
      - Nickc2
        
        You shouldn’t do that, you might scare the natives.
        
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        April 18, 2020 2:26pm
- Inandout
  
  Yvette, as my doctor once told me, every medical drug has side effects. Long term use of any drug is not wise.
  
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  April 18, 2020 12:20pm
- Michael NZ
  
  5 days of hydroxy twice a day.
  5 day of antibiotic twice a day
  5 days of Zinc once a day.
  
  for early and medium effected.
  
  Yvette
  lets get some balance here and maybe quote the French doctor and others using it professionally.
  
  I could post a few links if you like.
  But I’m sure many here have read the very same as they seem to be better informed than me often.
  
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  April 18, 2020 12:45pm
  - cmm
    
    Michael:
    
    Not just any antibiotic. Antibiotics are selected according to side effects.
    
    I would also add. Don’t do this on your own. Make sure you have a doc prescribe the stuff and understand what the combination might do with other meds you are taking or other conditions you might have.
    
    All drugs have side effects and interact with other drugs. And here I mean “drug” in its most broad form. Eating too much cabbage can interfere with some drugs as can drinking booze, eating sugar, etc etc etc.
    
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    April 18, 2020 2:24pm
- theoldbloke
  
  Suggest that family member get a transcript of what Trump said.
  Its not what she has written.
  
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  April 18, 2020 11:40pm
Michael

This question may have already been asked on Kiwiblog, I don’t look in on a daily basis.
How did the coronavirus start? Was it because someone purchased a bat at a foodmarket in Wuhan, then ate it and became infected?
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April 18, 2020 10:12am
- cmm
  
  Assuming they cooked the bat properly and made a nice bat soup, then no, the virus would not have withstood the heat.
  
  Perhaps the lab 200 metres down the road?
  
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  April 18, 2020 10:38am
  - Dougal10
    
    Usually when things like this are made in a lab a vaccine is made in parallel. Seeing as the chance of a sars 2 vaccine being created is unlikely that should disprove the theory.
    
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    April 18, 2020 12:05pm
    - cmm
      
      I did not say the virus was made in the lab. Nor do I think that.
      
      My money would be on the virus leaking out due to a bio-security slip up. ie. They had brought in a bat virus form where the bats live (900 km away) and were doing some research on it and someone chucked it in the wrong bin or something.
      
      Little mistakes like that are common in all sorts of operation from nuclear reactors to labs and secret documents ending up in the skip.
      
      People make mistakes that they shouldn’t make, but shit happens.
      
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      April 18, 2020 12:33pm
- brett68
  
  There’s was a university in Wuhan which is situated very close to the wet market who was studying bat to human sars transmission, it’s highly likely to have come from there.
  
  Either someone got infected and past it on or the other theory was that someone sold the test animals at the wet market for a little bit of extra coin instead of disposing of them.
  
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  April 18, 2020 10:41am
  - Jules99
    
    And the scientist studying it has disappeared – her profile was removed from their website too.
    
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    April 18, 2020 12:32pm
- emmess
  
  The bio lab ‘conspiracy theory’ is looking more and more plausible by the day.
  
  https://www.foxnews.com/politics/coronavirus-wuhan-lab-china-compete-us-sources
  
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  April 18, 2020 10:43am
- Critical Thinker
  
  The coronavirus came from the Wuhan Virology Lab. & the CCP did their best to cover it up. Allowing it to spread all over the world as a bio weapon to help the Chinese economy.
  
  https://youtu.be/3bXWGxhd7ic
  
  BTW. No bat’s were sold at the Wuhan “wet markets”. Which were reopened again a few days ago with the WHO’s blessing.
  
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  April 18, 2020 11:03am
- Maggie Pie
  
  Back in the 14th century, large quantities of Bat Guano was fed to patients in Mental Institutions because doctors believed it would calm their nerves due to the large concentration of Vitamin K. Unfortunately, it had the opposite effect, driving the patients totally insane. Hence the term “batshit crazy”
  
  Hope that helps Michael?
  
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  April 18, 2020 11:28am
  - Captain Mainwaring
    
    Love it Maggie, even if it’s an old wives’ tale.
    
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    April 18, 2020 11:45am
  - cmm
    
    C’mon Maggy they didn’t know what Vit K was back then.
    
    But yes, bats can carry a huge virus load and are excellent virus vectors because:
    1) They are mammals – like us.
    2) They travel long distances to feed, fight and mate thus transfering viruses around over large distances quickly.
    3) They live in communal caves. Some up to 10 million bats in a single cave. Even better than the New York subway :-).
    
    It is thus no surprise that bats are great at spreading rabies etc.
    
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    April 18, 2020 12:39pm
    - GoVege
      
      Very interesting, cmm.
      I especially liked that bit “they are mammals – like us”. 🙂
      Ten million to a cave?
      That’s a bat city!
      
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      April 18, 2020 2:54pm
    - Nickc2
      
      In Aust, they excrete a poisonous substance whilst flying and hanging around in trees and caves etc. They are also a protected species in Aust believe it or not.
      
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      April 18, 2020 3:14pm
      - cmm
        
        Our bats are protected too.
        
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        April 18, 2020 4:57pm
- Michael NZ
  
  already answered Michael
  
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  April 18, 2020 12:36pm
mikenmildagain

I see Trump’s approval rating in the polling aggregates got a significant bump through March as he responded to the coronavirus.
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April 18, 2020 10:12am
- mikenmildagain
  
  Of course, his ratings are back in the toilet again now…
  
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  April 18, 2020 10:53am
- Martin Williams
  
  Hidden due to low comment rating. Click here to see.
  US cases are 32% of the global total. US population is 4.3% of world population.
  
  Nearly 37,000 dead.
  
  He should be ashamed.
  
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  April 18, 2020 10:57am
  - Critical Thinker
    
    US deaths from the China Coronavirus are significantly less per million than many of the European nations. Would have definitely been a far higher death toll if Biden was currently President.
    
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    April 18, 2020 11:26am
    - mikenmildagain
      
      That’s an interesting hypothetical. Now do the Vietnam War if JFK had not been assassinated…
      
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      April 18, 2020 11:51am
      - Critical Thinker
        
        It’s not a hypothetical. It’s a fact. Joe Dementia Biden claimed that it was racist of Trump to close the US border to China & Europe, during the start of the pandemic ?
        
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        April 18, 2020 12:21pm
      - mikenmildagain
        
        Your redefinition of hypothetical to ‘something I believe would have happened’, amuses me.
        
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        April 18, 2020 1:23pm
    - Inandout
      
      CT, Biden wouldn’t know what day it was.
      
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      April 18, 2020 12:22pm
    - cmm
      
      The hospital systems in USA are primarily controlled by mayors and governors at the city and state level.
      
      Greater NYC has 18x the death rate of the rest of the USA.
      
      Perhaps it is NY/NJ mayors and governors that should be ashamed.
      
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      April 18, 2020 12:43pm
  - Steve James
    
    Martin, you are just anouther jealous TDS fool. 2016 has been and gone, Donald trump IS the President of the United States and against unparalleled disgraceful oposition he has done a phenominal job.
    You and the rest of the loopy left are just whingers.
    P.S. I am neutral on whether or not I like the guy but the facts are the facts.
    
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    April 18, 2020 11:54am
    - Martin Williams
      
      Yep, facts are facts, and the facts are 37,000 dead with 2000+ dying each and every day.
      
      This will go on for several weeks and Trump is in charge of it.
      
      It will be his legacy.
      
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      April 18, 2020 12:35pm
    - curry4me
      
      Steve James: If people cash the releif check, does that mean Trump is their president?
      
      1 3
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      April 18, 2020 6:02pm
      - Batman
        
        If Ardern put her name and photo on all wage subsidy notices, what would you think of it?
        
        It would be a shameless disgrace, just like Trump trying to take credit for the one-time payments.
        
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        April 18, 2020 6:03pm
  - Michael NZ
    
    martin stop being a partisan [del – mod,] please!
    
    Any of the Dems and esp crooked Hilary would have stuffed up the US of A long before now.
    
    % ? Why are you are behaving as such an idiot.
    What are the Chinese deaths total?
    x10, x100……
    We may never know.
    So stop quoting facts that are LA LA land.
    
    I realise that is because you are behaving like a partisan hack. stop it, start being a thinking Kiwi not a liar-labour bore.
    
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    April 18, 2020 12:33pm
    - mikenmildagain
      
      Why would anyone here stop being a partisan hack? Partisan hackery is Kiwiblog’s very lifeblood.
      
      3 15
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      April 18, 2020 1:21pm
Tauhei Notts

I read the NZ Herald this morning at 7 a.m.
Since then I have been thinking about it and wonder if their entire staff are hankering for a parliamentary communications career.
I wonder now if I am just being a tad too cynical.
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April 18, 2020 10:18am
- Captain Mainwaring
  
  Read the NZ Herald?
  You must be a tiger for punishment.
  
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  April 18, 2020 11:46am
  - Inandout
    
    Or really bored.
    
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    April 18, 2020 12:23pm
- Michael NZ
  
  Tauhei
  I stopped reading the Dompost and The Herald long ago when I came to the same conclusion.
  
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  April 18, 2020 12:30pm
I remember when

A 13th Diamond Princess death not out of the critical,serious case total. Is there anywhere where accurate totals can be found?
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April 18, 2020 10:19am
rouppe

An opinion piece in Stuff reports:

At the time of writing this article, Māori are actually under-represented in cases of Covid-19 infection according to the Ministry of Health’s total cases by ethnicity data. So why has the government allocated $56.5 million towards a special Māori response action plan for Covid-19?

Stuff reported that the government announced the package after “pressure from Māori health clinicians, service providers and iwi leaders”. Perhaps it’s time for the government to grow a spine. Mind you, creating dependency is one way to secure votes.
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April 18, 2020 10:26am
- Ruawai
  
  Would be interesting to find out who actually receives this Maori money and what it was spent on.
  
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  April 18, 2020 11:27am
  - Ruahine
    
    It is likely that a good amount of this Maori money will end up in Kaitaia.
    
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    April 18, 2020 11:50am
    - Paulus
      
      Yes, watch the new Car dealer sales in Northland, as opposed to Ngaruwahia Mercedes dealers this time.
      
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      April 18, 2020 1:23pm
  - cmm
    
    “who actually receives this Maori money ”
    
    A bunch of NGO owners who will end up doing almost nothing at the grass roots level.
    
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    April 18, 2020 12:45pm
  - GoVege
    
    You mean like “accountability”, Ruawai?
    That’ll be the day! 🙂
    
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    April 18, 2020 2:57pm
- GoVege
  
  Maybe they can spend a few of those 56 millions on helping prevent the suicides of a few Maori kids?
  Or providing alternative homes for the most vulnerable..the ones who are abandoned by both their parents at an early age.
  But that would involve acknowledging the problem is an absence of parenting…
  
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  April 18, 2020 3:02pm
oldfella

So, the UK is reconsidering letting Huwai get involved with their 5G network. Sounds racist to me.
https://www.bloombergquint.com/technology/johnson-s-huawei-plan-at-risk-as-u-k-set-to-rethink-china-ties
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April 18, 2020 10:40am
Maggie Pie

Knowing me, when this is all over, I’ll probably fancy a night in.
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April 18, 2020 10:47am
- Maggy Wassilieff
  
  Especially if your old man goes out…
  You’ll finally have a turn on the sofa.
  
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  April 18, 2020 1:18pm
oldfella

For the Trump haters on KB, have a listen to the Democrats ‘Great White Hope’ (Or should that be ‘Hopeless?’). Anyway, trust the MSM – Joe’s got this election in the bag.
https://www.citizenfreepress.com/breaking/joe-biden-is-fluent-in-gibberish/
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April 18, 2020 11:12am
- mikenmildagain
  
  I can’t wait for their debates – it’ll be like some bizarre comedy sketch.
  
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  April 18, 2020 11:55am
- Stu2
  
  It’s going to be just like the last US election – neither candidate worth voting for
  
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  April 18, 2020 12:20pm
  - Michael NZ
    
    Stu2 No it will be like last time.
    A crooked fckwit liar for the Dems and a pussy grabber for the GOP.
    
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    April 18, 2020 12:28pm
Fletch

I see that a Wellington ferry company wants funding of $25 million under the govt’s “shovel ready” scheme for a 100% electric ferry in Wellington between the CBD and the airport. Not sure if there’s going to be too much use for the airport in the near future….
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April 18, 2020 11:16am
- Captain Mainwaring
  
  Madness. The nearest wharf to the airport involves a 2 km bus ride. And good luck finding a plane.
  
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  April 18, 2020 11:49am
- Martin Williams
  
  That’s a great idea though, long term.
  
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  April 18, 2020 12:37pm
  - All_on_Red
    
    No it’s not
    
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    April 18, 2020 1:13pm
oldfella

A piece from the always interesting Spiked Online – an interview with a pathologist who says we need to keep questioning the merits of lockdowns. But he’s old, and he’s white, and he’s male. Hasn’t even got pink hair, so what would he know? .
https://www.spiked-online.com/2020/04/17/theres-no-direct-evidence-that-the-lockdowns-are-working/
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April 18, 2020 11:17am
oldfella

This guys finds some interesting parallels between Wuhan Covid-19, and Climate Change alarmism. I must admit I read it with my shocked face, well hidden behind a face mask.
http://coyoteblog.com/coyote_blog/2020/04/parallels-between-covid-19-alarm-and-global-warming-alarm.html
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April 18, 2020 11:23am
Poppa

I have noticed lately that there seems to be quite a number of new posters here & that is a good thing

Welcome if you are new & I hope you enjoy your stay

It would be interesting to know what brought you here?
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April 18, 2020 11:26am
- Cinematic
  
  Poppa, I’ve been a long time reader but never commented prior to the lockdown. I’m now commenting due to rising anger at what I see as an unjustified attack on my liberty by one of NZ’s least competent administrations. It’s been a perfect storm you might say.
  
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  April 18, 2020 12:18pm
  - Poppa
    
    Welcome. Good to hear
    
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    April 18, 2020 12:34pm
- PhilBest
  
  Some of us who might seem to be “new” will be remembered by old-timers as regular commenters back in the day. I and possibly others “gave up bothering” at some point. Now we’re back here because we’re being paid by the government to not do what we usually do with our day.
  
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  April 18, 2020 12:54pm
- Maggie Pie
  
  Ever since posting to my followers on Instagram a few weeks back that i was a regular commentator on KB, I’ve also noticed a rise in new posters here as well.
  Coincidentally, a lot of the pseudonyms appear to be the same too.
  
  Just saying.
  
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  April 18, 2020 2:14pm
Ruawai

Love Judith Collins quote that level 3 is actually ‘Level 4 with KFC’
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April 18, 2020 11:27am
- mikenmildagain
  
  It’s certainly comforting to know that she is missing it too.
  
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  April 18, 2020 11:57am
- MCos
  
  ‘A witty saying proves nothing’
  Voltaire
  
  Or as President Trump would say
  “It doesn’t matter whether it’s true, only that it’s believable.”
  
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  April 18, 2020 12:20pm
Fletch

I see that the media and the Dems are saying that Trump can’t force states to come out of lockdown. That he is being a dictator if he tries it. Well, according to the Constitution it is entirely legal under the Interstate Commerce Clause and has nothing to do with federalism or Article 10.

Conservative radio host Mark Levin fired back on “Hannity” Thursday at governors who claim they have the sole power to decide what businesses they can close and what restrictions they can put on their populations.

The “Life, Liberty & Levin” host explained that the Commerce Clause of the Constitution gives Congress the power to “regulate commerce … among the several States” and added that the New Deal era saw Supreme Court rulings that further strengthened the federal executive’s authority over the states.

“The debate about federalism was a fake debate and I’ve given this a lot of thought,” Levin said. “This has nothing to do with federalism. The president has more power to order governors, if he chooses, to open up their economies than people think.

“States have the power to regulate commerce within their boundaries, but the Congress under the federal Constitution is the only body that has the power to regulate interstate commerce,” Levin went on. “Governors, through their dictates and their fiats of what’s essential and not essential, shutting down businesses — that’s the ultimate regulation. If it affects interstate commerce in a very negative way, the president can in fact enfore the interstate Commerce Clause of the Constitution, where governors do not have the power to control interstate commerce.

“The state’s police powers do not extend to interfering with interstate commerce,” Levin continued. “The clause was explicitly put in the federal Constitution to promote commerce nationwide.”

“These governors are a little confused,” he said. “They think federalism means they have all the power and no accountability, that they can make whatever decisions they want and the rest of us have to pay for it. That’s one-way federalism. No such thing exists.”

https://www.foxnews.com/media/mark-levin-governors-federalism-dictates-fiats-coronavirus
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April 18, 2020 11:33am
- mikenmildagain
  
  I think people are already familiar with President Man-baby’s claims to unlimited powers. See his threat to unilaterally adjourn congress if it doesn’t act quick smart to appoint more under-qualified judges.
  
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  April 18, 2020 11:59am
  - KevO'Brien
    
    Someone has to run the show. Would you trust Pelosi to get your groceries?
    Biden for POTUS–first demented Pres.
    
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    April 18, 2020 12:25pm
    - Steve Otto(North Shore)
      
      Pelosi can get my groceries. Would be 95% alcohol LOL
      
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      April 18, 2020 1:20pm
Maggy Wassilieff

RNZ runs a decent synopsis of media submissions to the Epidemic Response committee..

https://www.rnz.co.nz/national/programmes/mediawatch/audio/2018742770/media-make-the-case-for-emergency-help

(wonder why they haven’t done similar for each day’s hearings)
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April 18, 2020 12:07pm
- kevn
  
  @Maggy… Having an assessment of each days ERC hearing would give Bridges media oxygen.
  They don’t want to do that…
  
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  April 18, 2020 12:32pm
- david
  
  uptick for the beautiful ‘sarc’ comment in brackets at the end.
  Many a true word spoken in jest I suppose but then I suspect you weren’t joking.
  
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  April 18, 2020 1:51pm
ste3e

On the one hand there is death from which there is no resurrection. On the other hand there is debt created by agreement and forgiven likewise. And we debate whether a few deaths might not be paid to limit debt. Are we insane? Yes I am afraid we are.
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April 18, 2020 12:09pm
- KevO'Brien
  
  Death is the ultimate human condition. Living is the opportunity of continuance. It’s easy to stop that by denying work and the normal outcomes of life. People expire in those circumstances.
  It’s not being cold hearted to consider the future living environment which sustains the physical body. For most people that is work in its many forms. For others, it’s the waiting it out as a beneficiary etc. and contributing to the society as best we are able.
  The virus is an interrupter not generally a terminator. We should be allowed to get on with our lives. They are not owned by the State or to be owned by the State for its purposes.
  
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  April 18, 2020 12:34pm
  - PhilBest
    
    Very eloquently put, Kev.
    
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    April 18, 2020 12:56pm
Michael NZ

Every FBI agent responsible for their “Woods file” and it’s attendant application should be demoted or sacked if they don’t correlate with the allegations.
That probably should go for their line managers also.

Wonder if it is the same here in NZ with our system.
Who watches the watchers?

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2020/04/the_ig_audit_big_problems_for_comey_and_pals.html
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April 18, 2020 12:24pm
Mr Coronavirus

I believe burglaries in NZ are down enormously.

That tells me:

– Judges are *entirely culpable* for criminals running amok.

– Burglars are scum who prey on the productive while they are working.
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April 18, 2020 12:28pm
Lucia Maria

Oldest son lost his job yesterday via phone call from his boss.

Somewhat covid-related as the stress from working from home brought communication issues with a working mother of a young baby (manager) to a head. It’s the type of issue that could have been sorted out had everyone been able to communicate face to face in the office.

Thanks Lock Down.
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April 18, 2020 12:41pm
- brett68
  
  I’m guessing your son is in America?
  
  If it’s NZ, Just because there’s a lockdown that doesn’t mean proper process doesn’t have to be followed.
  
  You’d probably find his manager has broken all sorts of employment law and he could take a case against her.
  
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  April 18, 2020 1:28pm
  - Lucia Maria
    
    Thanks, Brett.
    
    This is in NZ. Seems like the manager has had it out for him ever since she came back from maternity leave earlier this year.
    
    My son originally took the issue up with a number of people in the company who said she was overreacting and the problems were trivial, but the Lock Down has seriously magnified them.
    
    He’s not keen on pursuing them (doesn’t want his name destroyed, just wants to get another job with a rival company), but who knows, he might change his mind.
    
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    April 18, 2020 2:10pm
    - brett68
      
      Have a read through this and then consult an employment lawyer, I really doubt the proper process has been followed and he’d have a very strong case against his manager/employer.
      
      https://www.employment.govt.nz/ending-employment/dismissal/
      
      Probably highly likely his employer has no idea what’s going on and would be horrified if they found out because it’s them who’s in the firing line, legally.
      
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      April 18, 2020 3:23pm
Ruahine

You have all been warned.

https://www.tvnz.co.nz/one-news/new-zealand/dont-change-your-behaviour-yet-jacinda-ardern-warns-after-level-3-details-revealed
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April 18, 2020 12:52pm
- Steve Otto(North Shore)
  
  She is loving the control, and will not relinquish it easily. Power mad, never mind what it costs, she is not paying – you/we are
  
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  April 18, 2020 1:26pm
  - david
    
    Does anyone else consider it both strange and highly suspicious that in the middle of a “level 4 Lockdown and the biggest health crisis in the country’s short history (bigger than the Spanish Flu, the Polio Epidemic) there is no 1:00pm briefing today.
    Something either very bad or so good that we can’t be told about it has happened in an environment where we only get the information that a cabal of bureaucrats and socialist politicians decide we should have.
    
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    April 18, 2020 2:15pm
    - Nutta
      
      They’ve all driven to the beach with Dr David Clark?
      
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      April 19, 2020 12:13am
Michael

Thanks to those who replied to my coronavirus question. I was aware that some were blaming that laboratory in Wuhan [Donald Trump for example] but I don’t know if I go along with that. But of course if that was the true reason I don’t believe we will ever be told.
I am thinking someone bought a bat at a food market, took it home to eat, failed to cook it properly, and so caught the virus.
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April 18, 2020 12:53pm
- Maggy Wassilieff
  
  It’s probably more complicated than that…
  
  bats can pass on viruses to many other animals
  
  So any wild animal foraging in vegetation visited by bats will encounter infected bat poop and urine.
  
  The wet markets contain lots of wild animals such as pangolins , snakes, beavers, and civets that have been caught at various times and usually kept in cages close to domestic living quarters.
  
  Plenty of opportunities for humans to come into contact with animals invected with covid-19.
  
  Wet Markets serve as a point where the virus can become concentrated into a small location.
  https://www.businessinsider.com.au/wuhan-coronavirus-chinese-wet-market-photos-2020-1?r=US&IR=T
  
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  April 18, 2020 1:31pm
  - GoVege
    
    But they can’t pass the virus on to … veges!!
    
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    April 18, 2020 2:45pm
    - GoVege
      
      The truth hurts….but the truth will set you free…or at least spare you from horrible contagious diseases…. 🙂
      
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      April 18, 2020 3:04pm
      - Classic Liberal
        
        And shelve the Schadenfreude please. Otherwise you seem like a nice person.
        
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        April 18, 2020 6:08pm
      - GoVege
        
        I wasn’t meaning to do a “Schadenfreude”, CL.
        Just couldn’t pass up a chance to push the advantages of a vegetarian diet.
        And I like you too… 🙂 🙂
        
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        April 18, 2020 7:37pm
    - Classic Liberal
      
      Since when have veges not been grown in: soil and poop? No way they couldn’t easily have infected material on them.
      
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      April 18, 2020 6:07pm
      - GoVege
        
        That’s true if they’re not washed properly…or cooked.
        
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        April 18, 2020 7:39pm
  - theoldbloke
    
    http://www.rationaloptimist.com/blog/bats-behind-the-pandemic/
    
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    April 18, 2020 11:42pm
- Fletch
  
  It has been proven that the people who worked at the lab were working on the bat virus. They even published a paper about it in a reputable American journal.
  
  The WIV published in the peer-reviewed US Journal of Virology in 2017 that it had genetically engineered a coronavirus found in a horseshoe bat and that it required only a minimal change to the Receptor Binding Domain — amino acids 310 to 518 — to make it infectious to humans. They said they achieved this using an HIV-based pseudovirus system. As it happens, the SARS-CoV-2 virus has a 96 per cent resemblance to a viral nucleic acid sequence from a horseshoe bat and according to an article published in Nature by David Cyranovski the key differences are ‘in the RBD sites.’ In the preprint of an article in bioRxiv on SARS-CoV-2, researchers found an ‘uncanny similarity of unique inserts in the 2019-nCoV spike protein to HIV-1 gp120.’
  
  https://www.spectator.com.au/2020/03/xi-who-must-be-obeyed/
  
  There’s no doubt these scientists were messing around with it. The same lab had already had two previous viruses escape.
  
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  April 18, 2020 3:06pm
  - Fletch
    
    Also see –
    
    https://www.nationalreview.com/2020/04/coronavirus-china-trail-leading-back-to-wuhan-labs/
    
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    April 18, 2020 3:19pm
- All_on_Red
  
  Michael
  If a “‘wet market’ animal to human transmission” was the correct virus explanation – and not incompetence/malfeasance at the Wuhan Lab – then given how many putrid wet markets there are across Asia, we should have these extremely contagious and deadly viruses rampant all the time.
  But we don’t.
  I reckon it’s the Lab
  
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  April 18, 2020 3:21pm
- Alex13
  
  It’s been reported that “Lab #4” near Wuhan had been working on an HIV vaccine using a coronavirus as a base for it. Scientists found excerpts of HIV genome in the current coronavirus and concluded it to be an engineered one.
  The upside is that such artificial structures tend to not survive in the open for too long, so there’s hope that this coronavirus can disappear just as quickly as it came on,
  
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  April 18, 2020 5:41pm
  - Batman
    
    “reported” aka a wild rumour.
    
    Stop spreading gossip. It’s unhelpful.
    
    If you’re going to do that, provide a link to whatever website it came from.
    
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    April 18, 2020 5:58pm
    - mikenmildagain
      
      Stop spreading gossip
      
      Ahem, this is Kiwiblog. Where would we be without gossip.
      
      3 8
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      April 18, 2020 6:06pm
    - Alex13
      
      https://www.zerohedge.com/health/covid-19-man-made-virus-hiv-discoverer-says-could-only-have-been-created-lab
      
      1 1
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      April 18, 2020 10:40pm
      - Batman
        
        Zerohedge?
        
        Great. Super reliable.
        
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        April 19, 2020 1:51am
I remember when

skeptic skeptic 11.02am
The extra snow they are receiving lately may have two beneficial effects. Isolation more likely and the cold weather with the sauna may stimulate immunity system. Old treatment to prevent flu involved hot and cold showers.
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April 18, 2020 12:56pm
I remember when

Michael
Don’t forget that it is believed to be unlikely that the right type of bat was sold at Wuhan. Fruit bats most likely wet market bat sales and not covid-19 hosts.
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April 18, 2020 1:12pm
Chuck Bird

It seems the daily update has been delayed today. Has anyone seen it somewhare.
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April 18, 2020 1:20pm
- Steve Otto(North Shore)
  
  Maybe there were no new deaths to report, and they are going to manufacture some?
  Maybe the numbers are all wrong and they have been caught out leading us up the garden path?
  
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  April 18, 2020 1:31pm
- Maggy Wassilieff
  
  There wasn’t a parliamentary briefing at 1pm.
  
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  April 18, 2020 1:32pm
  - Piniwi
    
    No MW @1.32 pm but there was this from the missing MOH: “The Government is making an investment of $200 million towards purchasing coronavirus personal protective equipment, or PPE, as part of a funding boost towards health services.
    In an announcement from Health Minister David Clark this morning, the $200 million boost was confirmed to include 20 million face masks, 9.4 million pairs of gloves and 1.2 million aprons.”
    This surely is a response to so many front-line health workers needing to go into isolation after having to work with minimal protective equipment. It might also explain why no awkward daily questions that might have been asked at a daily briefing. Or perhaps not as we are still waiting for any real questions to be fielded.
    
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    April 18, 2020 2:36pm
- Chuck Bird
  
  There is no live report today. Maybe Cindy slept in.
  
  There are 13 new cans and 544 active cases.
  
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  April 18, 2020 1:34pm
- nickle
  
  I note Community Transmission is now at 4%, after being 2% up until fairly recently (at least 3 days ago from what I can find out). This may be significant.
  
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  April 18, 2020 2:22pm
  - Captain Mainwaring
    
    Yes, but it’s 4% of stuff-all, and now that the borders have been closed and the clusters identified, community transmission is all that’s left.
    
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    April 18, 2020 4:20pm
Ruahine

No. You did not save thousands of lives but you did put thousands of lives in jeopardy by not closing the borders. What you did manage to do is kill tens of thousands of jobs and put us into $10 billion more debt for the new generations.

https://www.newshub.co.nz/home/new-zealand/2020/04/opinion-dear-mike-new-zealand-didn-t-overreact-to-the-coronavirus-pandemic-we-saved-thousands-of-lives.html
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April 18, 2020 1:26pm
- Poppa
  
  Actually the debt will be at least $50b if not $100b
  
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  April 18, 2020 1:51pm
  - Chuck Bird
    
    Roberson on Newshub Nation was asked about debt and taxes. He said he was just focused on saving lives not worrying about such things till later.
    
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    April 18, 2020 2:12pm
    - Maggy Wassilieff
      
      That’s the Min of Health’s job…
      Robbo’s is the Economy
      Ardern is the one who is meant to see that Balance is maintained between Health/Welfare and a functioning Economy.
      
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      April 18, 2020 2:28pm
    - Nickc2
      
      Him and Winston are on the economy side of the fence according to Hosking and as such, I’m guessing he has been told to pull his head in while St. Cindy is grabbing the headlines and votes.
      
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      April 18, 2020 2:47pm
- emmess
  
  See that stupid quote from Clark Gayford in the article link from Ruahine.
  Basically, it is saying shut up and don’t think for yourself. Do what we say and react emotionally.
  
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  April 18, 2020 2:35pm
  - Nickc2
    
    He would have to be a wanker wouldn’t he?
    
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    April 18, 2020 3:26pm
    - Poppa
      
      Weapons grade wanker
      
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      April 18, 2020 4:15pm
- theoldbloke
  
  Why do these Media people rattle on about comparing NZs overreaction to all the horror stories from overseas and conclude Aus/NZs reactions the best in the world.!!
  
  Why do they leave out all the countries that indeed are better.
  Taiwan the gold standard – rarely gets a mention.
  Go look at the deaths per million and look at the countries with 1 or less (NZ is at 2 Australia at 3)
  Many countries (48) have zero deaths!!
  Yep lots of little island and remote communities. But many large populations as well.
  
  Then there is
  Gold standard Taiwan at 0.3
  Hong Kong 0.5
  South Africa 0.8
  
  https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/
  
  Sorry, but NZ is NOT and has not the best reactions in the world.
  
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  April 18, 2020 11:57pm
Durden

More equitable treatment for tenants and landlords in Queensland.

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-04-17/coronavirus-queensland-renters-forced-prove-why-cant-pay-rent/12159102
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April 18, 2020 1:51pm
- Nickc2
  
  Wow and a Labor government in Queensland too! Do you think Cindy will take note? Not on your life. Landlords are capitalist hate items in Cindy’s pea like brain.
  
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  April 18, 2020 1:56pm
Prisoner of Comrade Jacinda

Demanding Princess Jacinda Ardhern is bored of living in Parliament Castle and decides to swap roles with Andrew Little, the lowly prime minister male, as she thinks his job seems much more fun. However, it isn’t long before she is bored of this job too, and decides to play a trick on the townsfolk. “CHILD POVERDY, CHILD POVERDY!” she cries, sending the panicked villagers up the hill – only to find there is parental neglect. “GLOBAL WARMING, GLOBAL WARMING!” Jacinda later cries, giggling. Again, the townsfolk rush up the hill to her rescue, huffing and puffing – only to find a normal day’s weather. So later, when the cry “PLAGUE, PLAGUE!” comes from Jacinda, the townsfolk ignore her. But this time there really is a coronavirus-19. SO SHE PUTS THEM ALL IN JAIL…

A new twist on a classic tale, this re-worked fairytale with a moral is the perfect way to broach the sensitive subject of telling the truth to New Zealand’s children (of all ages!)
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April 18, 2020 1:56pm
- Steve Otto(North Shore)
  
  “PUTS THEM ALL IN JAIL”
  Collective punishment.
  Well done Prisoner
  
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  April 18, 2020 2:16pm
Steve Otto(North Shore)

Quarantine is when you restrict the movement of sick people, Tyranny is when you restrict everyone
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April 18, 2020 1:57pm
- Harriet
  
  If China continues to soldier on with the UN, WHO, WTO of globalism, and individuals remain tools of governments supporting of comity for the sake of business with China, then countries will still nominally exist, if only for accounting purposes.
  
  The CCP is a Chinese Junk. It’s time for a watershed. 😎
  
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  April 18, 2020 2:57pm
- Alex13
  
  I think you got both definitions wrong.
  
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  April 18, 2020 5:29pm
Durden

Norway claims to have the pandemic under control. But this info from Norway about job seeker numbers getting up to 10.7% already suggests that NZ Treasury numbers are optimistic.

https://www.lifeinnorway.net/norway-job-seeker-rate-surges-to-10-7/

And how they are panning to manage broad-based testing to maintain control.
https://www.eurasiareview.com/17042020-norway-to-start-broad-based-covid-19-testing-by-months-end/
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April 18, 2020 2:02pm
BeaB

Apart from Steve Braunias nastily throwing his poor old harmless cousin under the bus, the Herald this morning is no more than a government propaganda sheet.
Have they all drunk the Jacinda Koolaid?
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April 18, 2020 2:03pm
Nickc2

Try this advertisement in NZ – good luck!
https://www.michaelsmithnews.com/2020/04/this-ad-from-china-is-real-it-went-to-air-it-tells-you-all-you-need-to-know-about-china-racism-and-t.html
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April 18, 2020 2:40pm
- BeaB
  
  After waiting ages in the Beijing heat, my well-educated friend would not get in the taxi because two black guys got out and she was worried about what we’d catch off the seats.
  
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  April 18, 2020 3:05pm
curry4me

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bv8FxerAeAQ

Victor Orban can use decrees to respond to CCP virus problems.
Parliament not suspended. PMs party has a super-majority.
Cultural Marxists don’t like nationalist populist policies.
Who’d have thunk it?
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April 18, 2020 2:41pm
curry4me

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w71sCKZqkVQ
RAAB says origin of CCP virus needs to be investigated.
Many calls to disentangle from involvement with China.
Suspicions about the CCP, and its minions are nothing new.
Citizens will need to see a show of public distrust in the CCP.
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April 18, 2020 2:41pm
- Alex13
  
  Will the Italians think long and hard after this pandemic whether they want visitors from China and other similarly dubious places, or will the money override common sense again? Of course, the Italians are not the only ones…
  
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  April 18, 2020 5:24pm
Fletch

Some idiot who had tested positive with the virus goes shopping at a supermarket in Timaru. Police arrest him, then let him off with a warning.

https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=12325775

Some people are frickin’ idiots with no thought for other people.
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April 18, 2020 3:02pm
- Ruahine
  
  I wonder about these sorts of stories. Especially from this type of newspaper.
  
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  April 18, 2020 4:51pm
- Captain Mainwaring
  
  In Oz that half-wit would be in jail.
  
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  April 18, 2020 8:17pm
GoVege

I’m listening to the beautiful sounds of a tui as we speak…(or post).
Yesterday I saw a group of fantails playing on the neighbour’s clothesline.
Thankfully we have a few upsides to this lockdown… 🙂
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April 18, 2020 3:08pm
fernglas

The people who think they might die from Covid-19 are the same ones who think they might win Lotto
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April 18, 2020 3:13pm
I remember when

SGA – Abortion, Euthanasia and Covid-19
Abortion – killed
Euthanasia – Killed or given means to kill themselves
Covid-19 – You catch the disease. Not deliberately infected by someone. No level of lockdown guarantees you will catch the disease
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April 18, 2020 3:13pm
- SGA
  
  meh – If you see a group of people likely to drown, and you choose to nothing to save some of them (even though you have a rope beside you), that’s still morally reprehensible, isn’t it? Especially if you are one who claims to place great value on the sanctity of life? Heavens, even if you end up saving none of them, should you have at least tried? What would the good Samaritan do?
  
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  April 18, 2020 5:40pm
Swifty

Ferals roaming Auckland’s streets and public transport:

https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=12325783

Animals.
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April 18, 2020 3:33pm
Grant

Didn’t Jaxsie get the memo?
From the International Union of Socialist Youth website……
“No government should get unrestricted power to fight against the coronavirus pandemic.”
Oh the irony!
G
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April 18, 2020 3:38pm
- Fletch
  
  I’m practicing socialist distancing 😉
  
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  April 18, 2020 3:57pm
- Alex13
  
  The young socialists got it wrong again, didn’t they?
  
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  April 18, 2020 5:11pm
- Steve Otto(North Shore)
  
  That was dated April 1st. How about that?
  
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  April 19, 2020 8:37am
WaveyDavey

Utter, utter scum. Spitting is foul even in normal times

https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/health/coronavirus/121104906/coronavirus-police-seek-two-people-involved-in-spitting-incident-on-auckland-train
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April 18, 2020 3:45pm
- Poppa
  
  They do fit the criteria by the look of them
  
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  April 18, 2020 4:18pm
bruceavon

So 60% of New Zealanders in these 2 polls want to stay at level 4! Surprised by that. I notice the poll doesn’t give the option of getting out entirely but that’s a good majority. What do they want to do, wait till we have no cases? Level 3 is much the same as level 4. Can’t see there’s much risk. Very strange. I personally think level 3 should be more lenient. Butchers, greengrocers even mitre 1o open and then go to level 2 after 2 weeks. We can’t stay in lock down forever. Baffling.
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April 18, 2020 4:20pm
- Max
  
  I agree Bruce.Who can believe that 60% of NZ wants to stay in level 4 and are so so enamoured with Jacinda? All the people who have lost their jobs, the business owners who face ruin and possibly lose their house with the business as well? The unemployed who can’t afford their mortgage and will eventually lose their house. The mental anguish of the unnecessary lockdown is playing havoc on people. Are there that many people in NZ that want to sit around the house all day?
  
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  April 18, 2020 10:04pm
- theoldbloke
  
  As always look at the wording and structure of any polling.
  
  Jacinda Ardern’s Cabinet will soon decide if NZ will come out of the level 4 lockdown this week. Do you want to leave your small bubble for level 3?
  39% Yes, time for level 3.
  61% No, stay at level 4.
  
  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G0ZZJXw4MTA
  
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  April 19, 2020 12:03am
fernglas

When the vaccine becomes available, will the anti-vaxxers refuse to have it themselves?
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April 18, 2020 4:30pm
rangitoto

I’m seeing more stories that doctors are doubting the ventilator treatment that is being used for the most serious cases. The treatment may actually be killing the patients.
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April 18, 2020 4:41pm
- mikenmildagain
  
  I read something a few weeks ago about ventilators being very good short term, but are also linked to very poor longer-term outcomes. But if you need a ventilator, you are very ill…
  
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  April 18, 2020 6:08pm
  - rangitoto
    
    DM now has an article saying ventilators are death traps for this disease. Should just give oxygen as was done with BoJo. Could be that many of the deaths are due to medical malpractice.
    
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    April 18, 2020 9:04pm
MrTips

So its official then, neither Clark nor Genter are doing their jobs as Ministers of Health. Clark’s too busy breaking lockdown and getting demoted, now Genter has “so much more time” to cook at home”:
https://twitter.com/JulieAnneGenter/status/1251070391994347520

WHAT DO WE PAY YOU FOR JULIE? A massive world crisis and you’re blathering on about this?

Yup, Robbo is MoH now. Media should be asking very precise questions of Grant, even OIA, about what he has been interfering with.
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April 18, 2020 5:30pm
greybeard

I feel that this whole “Covid-19” business is now a Political issue, not a Health issue.
The so-called “government” is manipulating everything about it, to suit their agenda.
If the virus had never occurred, this “government” would have been facing very stern questions about their corrupt, inept, inefficient performance so far. How quickly we forget what they were enduring and having to answer and justify , before all this happened !
Covid-19 was a miraculous saviour for Ardern, Peters, Twyford, Woods, Peters etc etc.
And they will milk it to the utmost.
We are being duped. Roll on September.
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April 18, 2020 5:58pm
- Poppa
  
  Yes sir they are basking in this circus
  
  Cindy could not have wished for this in her wildest dreams. Almost total control, perfect for the socialist she is, and will grasp it as long as she can
  
  The carnage is not her problem
  
  10 1
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  April 18, 2020 6:24pm
- brett68
  
  What? for the outright win for Labour,
  I can’t say I’m too excited about that.
  
  6 2
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  April 18, 2020 6:39pm
- KevO'Brien
  
  ☑️☑️Make it a Rout 2020☑️☑️
  
  14 2
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  April 18, 2020 6:46pm

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Health Target 5 – elective treatments
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Dan Moskovitz

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