At long, long, long last a National MP is telling it like it is about the Government’s handling of COVID-19. Chris Penk, the National MP for Helensville, has written a missive entitled “Flattening the Country: the real story behind Labour’s lockdown”. He argues that a poorly prepared and panicked Government “set about destroying the village that is New Zealand in order to save it.” I couldn’t have put it better myself.
He begins by saying, “It was only supposed to be the curve that got flattened, not the whole country.” Again, I couldn’t have put it better myself. He describes the lockdown as lunacy and argues it was too harsh and unnecessarily extended. I agree. He says “whole industries have been led like so many lambs to a no-longer-non-essential slaughterhouse.”
It is not before time for a National MP to come out and tell the truth about the way the crisis was handled initially, and subsequently with the resultant loss of thousands of jobs virtually every day now. It’s high time the hard and early line is outed for the blatant lie that it is. The proof for the lie is highlighted in one date, March 15th.
I am tired of listening to Opposition politicians and those in the media saying what a good job the Government has done. Here’s what they didn’t do hard and early:
1. Close the borders
2. Implement testing
3. Start quarantining
4. Concentrate on protecting the elderly, particularly those in rest homes.
Had the above happened hard and early a lockdown might well have been avoided. This country, geographically, was probably the best placed in the world to have managed the crisis with little or no disruption. We could have avoided most of the workers, for example in construction, being in lockdown. Younger people only got mild symptoms which were not life threatening. Instead, thousands have lost or are about to lose their jobs because one woman had a different priority on March 15th.
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