Posted on 08/21/2020 4:30:10 PM PDT by DoodleBob
In mid-March, as the coronavirus pandemic began to take hold in Europe and the United States, New Zealand's Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern presented her country with a choice.
They could let coronavirus creep into the community and brace for an onslaught, as other countries around the world had done. Or they could "go hard" by closing the border -- even if that initially hurt the island nation's hugely tourism-dependant economy.
Ardern opted for the second path. When New Zealand had only reported 28 cases, Ardern closed borders to foreigners, and when there were 102 cases, she announced a nationwide lockdown.
In effect, Ardern offered New Zealanders a deal: put up with some of the toughest rules in the world, and in return, be kept safe -- first from the deadly coronavirus, and later, from potential economic devastation.
For a while, it seemed that deal had paid off. New Zealand spent seven weeks under lockdown, five of them under strict rules that meant even takeaway food and traveling outside of their immediate neighborhood were off limits. But by June, life was basically back to normal -- and in August, New Zealand marked 100 days without any community transmission.
Then, last week, that changed.
...
Somehow, authorities said, the virus appeared to have crept in through the border. As of Thursday, New Zealand has 101 active cases, bringing the country's total reported coronavirus cases to 1,304, including 22 deaths.
...And by promising safety, were governments like Ardern's always setting themselves up to fail?
(Excerpt) Read more at cnn.com ...
"What we're finding internationally is that countries that have control of Covid-19, like China, even if they're experiencing occasional outbreaks, have stronger economies," said Dominick Stephens, Westpac NZ's chief economist, in a video statement last Friday. "Those countries that have lost control of the virus like the United States are seeing economic forecasts constantly revised down and are weaker economically."
But there is some spirit left in NZ:
Others questioned whether New Zealand's focus on elimination was the right approach after all. "Our attempt to eliminate Covid is an obsession that will destroy us," wrote columnist Damien Grant on the country's biggest news website, Stuff.co.nz. He echoed sentiments that have been rattling around New Zealand for a while -- in their paper in July, Gluckman, Clark and Fyfe questioned whether New Zealand could afford to wait out another year or two "in almost total physical isolation."
"We were told we went hard and early and we stayed longer in lockdown the first time, those additional hard weeks, because we wanted to avoid a yo-yo back into lockdown, and here we are again," Paul Goldsmith, from the National Party, said Tuesday.
“We were told we went hard and early and we stayed longer in lockdown the first time, those additional hard weeks, because we wanted to avoid a yo-yo back into lockdown, and here we are again,” Paul Goldsmith, from the National Party, said Tuesday.
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At the core of this is the liberal hubris that you really can control everything if the right people are in charge. You can’t. Control is an illusion. You can, however, make things worse by trying to control everything.
Isn’t that spitzmaus gone yet? Do they have elections every 20 years?
Trevor Loudon!
New Zealand doesn’t have Real Elections anyway ,it’s all fixed
This china virus has been a test run to see how much governments could get away with doing to their people.
The woman prime minister is a hardcore socialist and has been from her youth. A true leader learns from mistakes but this egomaniac cannot admit that rollercoaster lockdowns don’t work. The entire world lifted her up as a champion and now she is proving a fool which she does not want to admit.
She is an extremist. She will not let one more person die from the virus in NZ. In the process, she is costing her nation’s people $440 million in economic damage PER WEEK.
New Zealand will be riding a rollercoaster of continual lockdowns way into the future if new leadership is not elected in the country. She cannot face the truth her approach is too extreme, yet ineffective.
They say her popularity is high but the 5 million citizens there will get tired of her failures in the near future and want to tar and feather her for destroying their futures.
New Zealand will be a future case study in leadership failure and will be compared unfavorably with Sweden for years to come.
Like the obsessed lunatic Captain Ahab pursuing the white whale, Moby Dick, Ardern will be seen historically as a rabid extremist not worthy of citizen support.
Jacinda Ardern is a tyrant. But New Zealand deserves her.
It’s interesting that NZ and Ireland put together have a slightly higher population than Israel. Now compare the NZ+I science and technology output with that of Israel. Not even close.
“This china virus has been a test run to see how much governments could get away with doing to their people..”
Exactly. Brilliant totalitarian vehicle. It can be put back in the garage until it needs to be taken for a ride again. It’s spare tire, “plausible deniability” is in the trunk. The radio is locked to propagandist stations. The engine can be supercharged to more high-powered, more deadly. The driver uses night vision goggles because the windows are not transparent...and so on and so forth.
Ask not what your government can do for you, ask what your government can do to you. WITNESS history. Murder by governments.
Covid-19 is endemic.
Everyone is going to be exposed.
If we had a chance to stop it, that chance was lost last November.
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