People’s reactions to Covid-19 have been interesting, to say the least. There is my very good friend (a leftie, who is also a big fan of Jacinda) who says everyone is overreacting, and in the end, it is ‘only old people’.
Tell that to Tom Hanks and his wife, Peter Dutton and Sophie Trudeau…
I pointed out that ‘old people’ are still people. They are someone’s friend or family member and deserve a little more consideration than to be thrown on the scrapheap of leftist indifference, but that is the world of ‘woke’ for you.
As Boris Johnson said on Friday, people are going to die before their time. These will be family members, and they will be mourned. That is the truth of a pandemic. We must not make light of it.
Tracey Martin was at a meeting a week ago with Peter Dutton. Dutton is now confirmed to have the virus, so Martin is now at risk. She has said she will self isolate, but how many people has she been in contact with since being exposed to the virus? People lack immunity to this virus, and it is very contagious. To date, Martin does not appear to have contracted the virus.
Imagine you had recently come back from a trip to Europe, having visited Italy before it was closed to the world. You were on a plane with 300 other people. You arrive at Auckland airport, where there is no screening, no one wearing face masks, go through immigration and then customs, and you breeze through. You catch the airport bus to the domestic terminal, along with 20 other people. You then board a plane for Wellington, with 100 or so others. At Wellington, you waltz through the airport, which is always busy, stand in the crowded lounge to collect your luggage, then you catch the airport flyer to the Hutt Valley, with 20 or so other people.
How many people might you have infected, even though you don’t know you have the disease? You are showing no outward signs, but that does not mean you cannot infect others. You should have been screened and isolated at the airport.
You recognise that you are at risk, and decide to take the advice to self isolate… but then you realise you have no food at home, so you decide to self isolate once you have been to the supermarket. There, another hundred or so people might be infected – in the aisles, the checkout queues, or even just those who pick up your trolley after you have used it.
How many people are we talking about now?
What if you then start to show symptoms, and decide to take the Healthline advice? They may take you seriously, because you have been overseas. But if the person sitting next to you on the flight to Wellington also starts to show symptoms, they may not be taken seriously at all.
An Auckland mother with “every single symptom” of coronavirus says her requests to be tested have been rejected.
Pippa Biggs, 43, said her eldest daughter got sick about four weeks ago, before NZ’s first coronavirus case was confirmed. Then she started to feel sick.
“Last week, Friday, it hit me. I had such a terrible headache and fever,” Biggs said.
“My landlord had just been visiting – they have just returned from China, in self-isolation as a result of the virus,” she added.
Although her family had not been in contact with anyone with a confirmed case of coronavirus, and had not been travelling themselves, she became concerned by her symptoms and contacted Healthline.
Having struggled initially to get a hold of anyone, and having missed calls back while on other calls to Healthline, Biggs said she began to feel better over the course of the weekend.
On Monday, however, her fever returned. She went home sick from the school she was working at as a learning support coordinator.
“Because I work with kids across schools, I thought I should try and get tested,” she told Stuff.
“I had all the symptoms. Every single one of them.”
Biggs spoke with Healthline again, to see if they could help her get tested. After being told she likely did not have coronavirus, she went to see a doctor, who also contacted Healthline.
The doctor was told Biggs did not meet the criteria for testing, as she had not travelled to other countries or had confirmed contact with someone with coronavirus for 15 minutes or longer.
Biggs feared this approach to testing would “come back to bite” the country.
“I keep doubting myself, thinking what if it’s not [coronavirus]. But I dont have to be right.”
She said, before feeling sick again, she had returned to her work at a school with “immunocompromised children”, and “had meeting after meeting, meetings with elderly people too”.
In a post on social media, Biggs wrote: “NZ has 5 confirmed cases, but there are over 9000 registered cases of self-isolation … that means that there are possibly 9000 homes, just like mine, who have all the symptoms, but can’t prove contact.”
“What about the people like me? The reality is I could’ve [infected several people].
“I’m carrying that guilt.”
Stuff.
So how many people might she have infected? how many people might the person sitting on the Wellington flight have infected? And why is Healthline not taking seriously cases which could in fact be cases of community infected Covid-19, when it is now quite possible that locally infected people are spreading the virus?
On February 15th, Italy had 5 cases, just like us. It is now in total lockdown.
I am not saying we need to panic. I am saying that our ‘she’ll be right’ attitude is doing us no favours here. Our borders are open, our politicians are meeting up with infected people, and our health services appear to be ignoring potential cases. This is a disaster waiting to happen.
We need some leadership, Jacinda. You need to be able to read between the lines. You need to make decisions from within all the advice you are being given, not just follow it blindly, as you always do. Your advisors are health professionals, not politicians. When they tell you we cannot stop passenger planes because medicines come into the country on them, you must do something to change that. They can’t. You can. Otherwise, there will never be enough medicines.
What would Scott Morrison say? Oh yes, I know.
“Tell her she’s dreaming”.
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