As you are no doubt aware, moderately serious seasonal influenza was this year successfully rebranded as COVID-19. The world has been enthralled by it ever since.
The first New Zealand lockdown (25 March to 13 May) was a seriously successful event for the socialist government. Not only was it widely regarded, for the first time, as being competent, but the martial law conditions under which it placed New Zealanders – an exacting copybook of the Soviet paradigm – would have been unthinkable under any other conditions outside of war.
It was almost too good to be true. An amoral and complacent public was easily bought off and delighted in being paid to sit at home doing nothing. The Marxist, globalist deep state network attained a new nadir.
Masks were avoided in lockdown the first time around, probably because the government had failed to secure enough of them at a time of high global demand. All that is changing now.
On Wednesday, 5 August New Zealanders were warned of the need for ‘mask days’ and ‘outbreak drills’ with experts calling for the nation to ‘urgently test itself against simulated community outbreaks of COVID-19’ to better prepare the country against a disaster of the type experienced in Melbourne.
The government began to float the idea that the use of face masks might become compulsory. Face masks are not proven to be particularly effective in curbing transmission, but the wearing of them is an important signal of compliance with the government’s will on the part of the wearer.
It is for this reason that non-democratic regimes in Asia insisted on wearing face masks in public early on. It’s logical that aspirational Pacific dictatorships should follow.
On Friday 7 August, National’s COVID-19 Border Response Spokesman Gerry Brownlee asked in the media why the government’s advice around the use of masks, and preparedness generally, had suddenly changed.
New Zealanders were told on Saturday 8 August ‘how to be prepared for a second wave of the virus’ by ‘stocking up on face masks, soap, hand sanitiser and paracetamol’.
At the same time the PM toyed with us over a Cook Islands and New Zealand ‘travel bubble’, leading some to believe that international flights in a limited capacity might be back on the cards. It’s the old dead-cat-on-the-table trick.
After the weekend, on Tuesday 11 August, the inimitable Dr Ashley Bloomfield publicly took a COVID test. There was no apparent reason for him to do so. He had not done this during the first lockdown. His stated purpose was to encourage the public to undergo voluntary testing.
Also on 11 August, five members of the same South Auckland family, with no recent history of international travel, tested positive for COVID-19.
On Wednesday, 12 August at 12 o’clock noon, Auckland was returned to Level 3 lockdown, and the rest of the country to Level 2 alert.
If any of this sounds scripted, that’s because it probably is. It’s obvious in retrospect that the government was preparing to re-enter lockdown on or before the 5th of August. Did it therefore know of, or suspect, community transmission at that time?
This ‘most open and transparent government’ certainly required us to ‘read between the lines’ and to ‘know it when we see it’ on this occasion.
We now appear to be living in a parallel universe, strongly resembling an episode of Shortland Street. Friday evening will be the government’s ‘cliff-hanger’, and the nation will spend the entire weekend with bated breath to find out what happens on Monday.
Many businesses and schools already appear to know that the geographical extent of the lockdown will spread. They well understand that the PM controls the script.
In any case, it is nonsensical to imagine that the lockdown might only last three days. Why not tell us now when it is expected to end? The reason, of course, is that we won’t be glued to the ‘drama’, and the PM won’t be able to ‘perform’ for us on television.
You can be sure that the PM’s COVID ‘war strategy’, which is also her re-election strategy, sits written and rehearsed on her Beehive desk.
The mood on the beach on Wednesday night in this National-voting Auckland electorate was, to my incredulous eyes and ears, one of genuine contentment. People are extremely comfortable with the wage subsidy and prefer to be paid by the government to stay home than they do to be autonomous, independent beings out in the workforce.
This enormous psychological expansion of the welfare state has, so far, received little popular attention. Slowly but surely, and in deathly silence, Jacinda Ardern is winning hearts and minds – and turning them to Communism.
At the end of COVID there will be a far greater level of acceptance that our lives rest in the government’s hands – that the state should clothe us, feed us, pay us, and order us about – than there was at the start.
This will be the ‘big win’ for Labour.
As a signal to Dear Leader the people will wear masks. And come the election – an election which she will ruthlessly control – they, expecting easier lives, free of the drudgery of work, will vote for her in droves.
If you enjoyed this BFD article please share it.
