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I took one for the team so you wouldn’t have to. I watched Ryan Bridge interview the Prime Minister on Newshub Breakfast at about 7.45 on Tuesday morning (August 24).
Covid has been a major worldwide news story since March last year. That would make it 18 months. EVERYBODY in the media should be fully informed by now, not only about its history so far but also the daily statistics from all over the planet and about what works and doesn’t work.
“While many here are compliant and agreeable there’s been heavy criticism from international press about our elimination strategy – joining us now is the prime minister – morena, prime minister”
A great start. The international media have indeed been scathing about the government’s lockdown and small wonder that the PM looked more than a little uncomfortable on camera after that intro.
“Can we start with any updates you might have that you think Kiwis deserve to know tonight – anything you’ve learnt between when we last saw you at 4 o’clock to this morning?”
That’s an interesting one. Someone should engage their brain before they open their mouth. It’s morning mate: you know, breakfast time. But never mind, we’re on lockdown so time is of no bearing for us prisoners in our own homes.
A curious question that: “any updates you might have that Kiwis deserve to know”? Deserve to know? Right. The prime minister is the all-knowing deity and oracle who preaches from the pulpit of truth and it stands to reason that she will be the arbiter of truth and what we “deserve” to know?
Mainstream Media at their professional best. Why not ask the obvious question from the intro:
“International media have been scathing in their criticism of your locking the country down and we’re being ridiculed all over the world. How do you respond?”
But no, we spend the next 5 minutes talking about any new figures she might have that she hasn’t told us about between 4.00pm yesterday and 7.45am today. That was always going to be a hiding to nowhere but I could see her warming to the subject. Dodged that bullet. Relief.
Bridge then launches into something about the atrium at the Crowne Plaza and vaccination appointments being cancelled. She doesn’t know and neither should she – according to her, it’s all “public health” stuff. Still nothing about the scathing comments from international media.
Some loose questioning about how we knew Delta was coming and we didn’t move to get people vaccinated. By now she’s warmed up and on a roll. She explains how other countries have stalled with vaccinations while we’re actually doing really well. He tells her other countries have been more successful with their vaccination programmes. She swats him away like a pesky little lightweight insect:
“I would say what is your measure of success? We have kept New Zealanders safe and we will continue to do so while we have our full scale ramp up of our vaccination campaign – but my ambition is far beyond the United States and the UK’s rollout. We need to have as many New Zealanders as possible vaccinated if we want to protect them against the kinds of outbreaks you are still seeing in both of those countries for whom you would compare us to.”
Poor Ryan doesn’t even notice that what she’s really saying here is: “WE WILL USE LOCKDOWNS AS OFTEN AS WE DEEM NECESSARY FOR YOUR OWN GOOD UNTIL WE HAVE ENOUGH PEOPLE VACCINATED”.
I was waiting for him to ask why she thinks lockdowns are of any use at all when the numbers suggest they make no difference whatsoever. And a minor point: fully vaccinated people are clearly getting the Delta variant. It is a spreader and it’s doing its job very well indeed, but thankfully, it seems that about 99% of the people who get it recover very quickly.
Anyway, she announces that we want to be “the top in the world” with regard to vaccines and we’re left to wonder what that actually means but it does sound encouraging. Bridge then asks:
“Let’s say that we uh get through this outbreak ahhh and you know God willing in a couple of weeks we’re able to come out of lockdown and whatever – what is to stop Delta coming back in and attacking a still vulnerable population who haven’t been vaccinated I think people are wondering can’t we ramp it up to protect us from the next possible outbreak?”
If Ryan had asked some basic well-informed questions instead of floundering around like this, we’d have a better idea of what the plan is.
How many of the positive cases actually get sick? How many of them have been vaccinated? How many need medical treatment? How many require emergency hospitalisation? How long are they staying in hospital? How many die? Isn’t it true that, around the world, Delta is proving to be highly infectious but relatively benign? Doesn’t that mean that counting the cases tells us very little? Shouldn’t we be counting those who actually get really ill? If that’s only a small percentage, shouldn’t we stop the lockdown nonsense immediately?
If she is unable or chooses not to answer all of those questions with accurate figures immediately, one would be justified in asking what she’s doing leading the government.
After all, how can anybody make lockdown decisions without knowing these most basic facts?
And we still don’t know how she feels about international media being scathing of our government’s lockdown.
