The Big Fat COVID Lie

Unemployment figures are skyrocketing.

“More than 60 per cent more people are now receiving Jobseeker Support work-ready benefits than the same time a year ago – and the number of people aged under 24 on the benefit has leapt 80 per cent.”

Christie wrote this week about unemployment being the worst effect of the Jacinda-made recession.

“The biggest concern is unemployment. With the announcement of the GDP figures, Treasury has revised its unemployment forecasts and now believes that unemployment will still be around 7% in 2023, and will not begin to fall significantly until 2027. That is 7 years of high unemployment, to go hand in hand with decades of deficits. When you remember all the pain and misery high unemployment will cause, these economic indicators are definitely nothing to celebrate.”

Media say the same thing over and over again: the reason for increasing unemployment is COVID, the reason for our failing economy is COVID.

“MBIE said unemployed people were now more likely to move to the “potential labour force” or to be classified as “not in the labour force” than they were before Covid.”

Radio, television and internet news and current event reporters all say COVID is a defining moment, that COVID is seriously screwing with us. Data is reported before COVID, after COVID and in the wake of COVID.

It’s a lie! The real culprit is the lockdown, COVID is just the patsy and if someone in overseas media gets it, why can’t media here?

If you think lockdown reduces COVID deaths, think again. The Daily Mail reports that a nation’s health prior to COVID is a bigger factor in reducing mortality than a lockdown, which explains why health outcomes for Maori and Pacifica are worse than their European counterparts.

Lockdowns have not had a big impact on coronavirus death rates around the world, scientists have claimed, and the health of nations beforehand was more important.

Levels of obesity and the amount of money people had were two of the most influential factors for a country’s death rate, the study claimed. High levels of obesity, with more than 30 per cent of adults seriously overweight, were linked to a 12 per cent increase in the number of deaths per million people.

India imposed lockdowns in late March.

“Stringent restrictions halted most economic activities and caused millions of people, many of them daily wage earners, to lose their jobs and revenue streams.”

Indians are oblivious to the damage wreaked by lockdown, they rallied in the streets to support the fight against COVID the same as the misplaced Karens out in force here, the COVID lie swallowed hook, line and sinker.

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CNBC reports the pandemic is to blame for India’s weakening economy.

“India’s recovery trajectory is going to be weak as the country is struggling to get past the peak of the pandemic, according to Priyanka Kishore, head of India and Southeast Asia economics at Oxford Economics. She also said India’s fiscal policy response has been “quite meagre” compared to the stringency of the lockdown.”

It wasn’t the pandemic that stopped Indian industrial production in its tracks.

Effective lying needs media assistance and Ardern’s $50M handout purchased a decent whack of it. I challenge anyone to find a single NZ media mouth telling the truth about lockdown: COVID always takes the rap.

The lie is told all day, every day: COVID is to blame, COVID created our “once in one hundred year event” with the supporting lie that Arden’s government handled the pandemic well. They didn’t. The effects of lockdown will be felt for decades, long after COVID becomes an accepted part of life.

John F Kennedy said, “no matter how big the lie; repeat it often enough and the masses will regard it as truth.”

Italian data was used to model research on the economic and social consequences of lockdown or “human mobility restrictions under COVID-19”. The report examined what happened when the Italian government used lockdown, as we did here, to slow down the infection.

“On March 9, 2020, Italy was the first European country to apply a national lockdown (1) in response to the spread of novel coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19). Following Italy and China, national lockdowns have been adopted by other governments, and mobility flows have been drastically reduced to decrease the transmission rate of COVID-19 (2).”

The researchers say the effect of lockdown was similar to a natural disaster.

“We model the change in mobility as an exogenous shock similar to a natural disaster.”

They do not blame the virus for the catastrophic economic effect, they blame lockdown saying the effect is “stronger in municipalities with higher fiscal capacity”. In other words, lockdown hits the financial sector hardest and, naturally, the poor hardest of all.

“Our results highlight both the social costs of lockdown and a challenge of unprecedented intensity: On the one hand, the crisis is inducing a sharp reduction of fiscal revenues for both national and local governments; on the other hand, a significant fiscal effort is needed to sustain the most fragile individuals and to mitigate the increase in poverty and inequality induced by the lockdown.”

The effect of lockdown is much worse than Ardern’s government anticipated. Lockdown is like using a nuclear bomb to settle a neighborly dispute: a completely disproportionate response with outrageous fallout.

Ardern’s nuclear moment is not climate change, it is lockdown.

“Lockdown measures have affected several production sectors, value chains, and trade exchanges, motivating G20 governments to announce fiscal interventions of about $8 trillion and massive monetary measures (4). The supply shock, in fact, is triggering deep contractions of aggregate demand, further endangering socioeconomic recovery (5).”

We cannot turn back the clock but we can end lockdown. Ardern won’t do it because that would admit to a huge error of judgement which is unlikely after refusing to acknowledge responsibility for her previous failures.

Media deserve to be challenged when they blithely say COVID is responsible for everything that is wrong, but where are the politicians challenging the lie?

It’s past time for Judith Collins to pull on her big girl pants, dust off her unused crusher boots and stomp the COVID lie to death. It’s her job to tackle the hardest and most important issue and get her knowledgeable but cautious sidekick, Dr Shane, on board.

Judith better rattle her dags before David Seymour beats her to this. Someone has to step up and end this nonsense sooner rather than later.

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