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© 2021 AFPNew Zealand extends national lockdown
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Haaa Nemui
Smart to do, despite what anyone says. Get vaccines done and then open up.
itsonlyrocknroll
Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern manages one of the most open and transparent Governments, trustworthy and honest to a fault.
The drawback is balance. The political necessity to find a flexible approach to a variant that wont conform to the norms of humanities need for togetherness within the community.
How long can one isolate within there home before cabin fever sets in?
The human social and cognitive need to exchange gossip to influence one another, to engage one on one.
It is taken for granted, until it is gone
Kaerimashita
Zero Covid will never work. But in the meantime authorities will have fun trying the same failing policies over and over again to try and achieve it. she would be better off focusing on getting her people vaccinated.
Strangerland
Because of how their Covid policies have been so extremely exceptional, and also because as a liberal nation they are setting a model of how things are done correctly in free and safe first world nations. Not just with Covid, but with all their policies.
itsonlyrocknroll
I believe a comprehensive vaccination policy is the best course of action. easer said than done if a government cannot secure enough doses of the vaccine.
I think in NZ, this could be the case.
fxgai
What is “liberal” about a lockdown approach?
If you are a New Zealander and you are vaccinated already, I gather that you are “locked down”.
There’s not much liberty in that that I can see.
Wasn’t there a book about redefining words to mean the opposite of their dictionary meaning?
Wakarimasen
Citing NZ as a world leader is a bit off. tiny country, island, at the end of the world , pretty sparsely populated etc etc. And still their lockdowns and border closures and other daft measures have not worked as they hoped they would.
WilliB
Didnt she just yesterday admit that you can not eliminate a virus from a country with lockdowns?
FtGuy2017
Call it insanity, nothing science here but belief
People have their own life and freedom, they are not your toys or your guinea pig to gather data.
Jimizo
I think there could be a sense of trolling the hysterical right. The incredibly low number of cases and deaths is impressive.
They never fail to rise to the bait.
She also gave the right an almighty spanking in the last election.
Maybe that’s part of it.
Wakarimasen
"The Right"? Why the assumption that in order to be sceptical of some of her Covid views and measures you have to be on "the Right"?
itsonlyrocknroll
Whatever one political affiliations, I don't believe the delta variant gets a vote? Do you?
No discrimination, no vaccine, your chance of life termination, in an induced coma on a ventilation machine rise exponentially, think of the family you leave behind.
Jimizo
You don’t have to be, but she does wind up the right like nobody’s business. The post I quoted earlier on tried to dismiss NZ as unimportant, and yet the poster felt the need to post here to have a go at Ardern.
That’s some going on her part. She’s got into the heads of many who couldn’t locate NZ on a map.
I must say I find it amusing.
Fard
New Zealand is fighting an uphill battle now that the administration let the situation get out of control. NZ should be able to stop Covid from spreading there like other countries have.
Strangerland
The willingness to sacrifice for the greater good of course.
Akula
Ardern has locked down the entire South Island until Friday next week (10 days in total) despite the fact there has not been a single case there on the basis that some people from Auckland flew there who might have had the virus (wastewater and COVID tests show no sign of the virus). It is beyond words how ridiculous that is.
Also every other city in the North Island outside of Auckland and Wellington has no reported COVID-19 cases, yet are all locked down. I am sorry but that is beyond absurd.
Jimizo
No, you’re getting hysterical again.
It’s not out of control.
Blacklabel
so, "The common good before the individual good"?
WilliB
Strangerland
Ah, the typical basic justification for authoritarianism, used by every totalitarian government from Mussolini to Hitler to Stalin to Pol Pot and up the CCP today.
Sad that people are falling for that, but I admit it looks tempting if one only looks at the surface.
Strangerland
That doesn’t describe New Zealand at all.
Extremists love false equivalencies. Like any of the countries you speak of are comparable to New Zealand.
This is why people look down on the right and binary hyper partisans. Because their extremism doesn’t leave room for a reasonable discussion. The only difference with the taliban is in ideology.
Jimizo
Hmmm...thought so. I think the walls have closed in on this one.
WilliB
Strangerland
The comment was about the justification for authoritarian overreach, not about NZ in particular. How far NZ goes down this road I do not know.
Please read more carefully before commenting on something that was not said.
Express sister
Sounds like a pretty good rule. It's in my individual interest to kill people and steal their stuff. It's in society's interest that I not do that. So we make laws that make it illegal to murder and steal. Pretty cool system, right?
Jimizo
There are opinion polls. As good as we have I suppose. You can’t please everyone.
It is worth remembering that the leader of NZ led her party to an almighty hiding of the opposition in the last election.
A real demolition.
dagon
Ah, the typical basic justification for authoritarianism, used by every totalitarian government from Mussolini to Hitler to Stalin to Pol Pot and up the CCP today.
Sad that people are falling for that, but I admit it looks tempting if one only looks at the surface.
Yet when in a pandemic there is massive financial relief to big companies and nothing to the populace nothing strikes the people who say this as authoritarian, oligopolic? It smacks of being shills for the same forces you profess to be against.
Helix
The Right"? Why the assumption that in order to be sceptical of some of her Covid views and measures you have to be on "the Right"?
I’ve noticed this tendency on this site. It is strange.
TARA TAN KITAOKA
BRAVO, U are doing the right ✅things.
Helix
It's smart if you want to live in a country without COVID in the air.
You might just as well aim to live in a country without influenza or the common cold.
Richard Gallagher
It is a small country with a population of approximately five million. The applied measures have been very effective in that particular place.
fxgai
The “greater good” as decided by those who make the sacrifices of their own free will, or those who decide the sacrifices to be made by others?
One is very much more consistent with liberty than the other is.
The only way I can see the New Zealand government types being liberal - is with respect to their decisions that effect other people’s lives, but that runs counter to standard dictionary definitions of what liberal actually means.
Ironic - telling people to forgoe their rights is the sort of stuff I expect to hear from the taliban.
Is it worth remembering that? For what purpose? Your team won and it felt good? Go ahead and enjoy those memories.
Circumstances change and if the government doesn’t adjust accordingly it’ll quite probably get creamed next time around.
The short term strategy that worked well in isolated New Zealand last year and arguably to some point in time this year is not likely the strategy that will work well for a New Zealand that wishes to open its borders again in future, to a globe full of Covid infected humans who are vaccinated or not.
I myself would be more than happy to visit New Zealand in future once vaccinated, but not if it demands my being in some quarantine for weeks and potentially getting locked down while traveling there. No thanks.
Economic impacts are also appearing now as filming shoots are being relocated elsewhere, as seen in the news recently. No not in the news at the time of the last election - the news now this year.
If their government types have any brains it’ll change course before too long. Unless New Zealand wants to be the next Galapagos, but I can’t think of any liberal democratic places in the world today that would. New Zealanders might decide to be the first but I’m not taking that bet.
itsonlyrocknroll
Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern is not some political black widow.
Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern top priority must be to procure vaccines.
And then to persuade the nation as a whole to accept vaccines are the best way forward.
Not a silver bullet.
I think that Jacinda Ardern can secure the trust of the nation to roll out a program.
Wolfpack
You can’t get a better controlled environment than the island nation of New Zealand and they still can’t keep out the virus.
GBR48
-Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern manages one of the most open and transparent Governments, trustworthy and honest to a fault.
Nope. https://www.standard.co.uk/news/crime/grace-millane-killer-anonymity-new-zealand-a4367871.html
In the time taken to test 13,000 people you could have vaccinated them.
Hito Bito
What if...? What if the COVID "vaccines" did NOT prevent the infection of COVID, but only mitigated the seriousness of the symptoms once acquired? What if hundreds, thousands, soon millions and billions of "fully vaccinated" people around the world, all, willfully or not, "following the science", STILL continued to spread, acquire, maintain and suffer from COVID, despite said "vaccinations"?
What if countries like New Zealand or Israel could entice or else coerce their entire populations to get the vaccine, yet this accomplishment still FAILED TO PREVENT ANY of the tripwires that will trigger another poor-people, small business and mental-health-destroying lockdown?
What if those leaders stubbornly cling to their knee-jerk, authoritarian-minded "solutions", in spite of those very policies now being in direct opposition to what "the Science" suggests must actually happen, ie, THAT WE ALL ADMIT THAT CATCHING COVID EVEN AFTER VACCINATIONS MIGHT SOON BECOME AS NORMAL AND AS DANGEROUS AS CATCHING THE COMMON FLU?
What if "leaders" like Ahern worldwide ended up maintaining draconian "solutions" which do not actually correct the reality of the present situation on the ground (once again, that fully-vaxed populations can still catch and spread the virus, even in lockdowns)? What then, Premier Ahern??
2020hindsights
Wakarimasen
That makes them similar to the UK except for overall population (butin the same order of magnitude). Their cities have similar population densities. The difference being in policy. And outcome.
They have worked remarkably well. Only 26 deaths. That's 5 deaths / million. The UK is 19,028 / million. A factor of almost 4000!!
WilliB
No.
bob
Considering this is but the second one, I would question your counting.
Akula
Here is an article that explains the phenomenon of Ardern quite clearly. A wolf in sheep's clothing.
https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/graham-adams-is-jacinda-ardern-the-messiah-or-just-a-very-crafty-politician/OX6JWIDJE2TA2RSCXVGMJVH77Q/
Strangerland
Meh, this is the same logic that says "women aren't as aggressive so don't get paid as much", then calls them "b*tches" when women act in an aggressive male-like manner.
Of course she's a shrewd politician. She wouldn't be leader if she wasn't.