New Zealand has a bad case of déjà vu. The Covid experts are still muttering over their crystal balls about stamping out Covid claiming unless more stringent measures are adopted we could be facing “50,000 daily Omicron infections by Waitangi weekend, according to modelling by a highly-respected, overseas health research organisation, peaking at about 80,000 each day just a few weeks later”.
With Waitangi Day less than a week away and daily cases barely into triple digits that prediction is highly unlikely but if you took their original prediction of 80,000 Covid deaths seriously, you are forgiven for feeling grateful for their latest silliness.
While some countries are relaxing Covid protocols and learning to live with Omicron, New Zealand is stuck in a Covid elimination time warp of its own making.
The government claims it has the advantage of learning from the rest of the world, but actually we are no further ahead today than we were in February last year when Jacinda Ardern promised the vaccine would miraculously end Covid.
“We have stamped out the virus before and we will do it again,” Ardern told a news conference in the capital, Wellington. New Zealand, which had gone more than two months without local infections before the January case, is to start inoculating its 5 million people against the new coronavirus on Feb. 20, receiving the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine earlier than anticipated.”
CNBC
If anything, vaccination is ramping up the number of daily Covid cases while the Government’s Covid objectives indicate they are simply treading water in pursuit of zero Covid.
If the vaccine actually worked against Omicron, and with 93% of NZ’s eligible population double vaccinated at 31 January, shouldn’t daily new cases be declining instead of increasing?
It’s a pity they didn’t focus on NZ citizens trapped overseas unable to return home, or the horrendous damage to the economy, particularly the tourism and hospitality sectors, after draconian lockdowns and the introduction of mandatory vaccine passes.
Last week the plan for mandatory mask-wearing under the red traffic light system was introduced and Associate Health Minister Ayesha Verrall said contact tracing would be stepped up under the new three-step approach to Omicron, despite last year’s collapse of the contact tracing system. Why does this government keep making promises they don’t keep?
The Covid experts stick to the story that vaccination immunity will stamp out Omicron despite overseas experts saying the opposite.
“Dr Jemma Geoghegan told RNZ’s Midday Report today that initial research shows being fully vaccinated with a booster shot is proving effective against the mutation.”What [the research] is suggesting is that if you’re fully vaccinated and with a booster, it will protect you well from both BA.1 and BA.2″, she said. BA.1 is the current dominant mutation of Omicron in New Zealand and globally.”
ODT
Who would believe NZ when the Pfizer vaccine roll out in Israel offers scant hope that Pfizer subdues Omicron?
“A fourth dose of the BioNTech/Pfizer vaccine is largely ineffective in stopping Omicron infections despite boosting antibodies, an Israeli hospital study showed. Just over 150 members of the Tel Aviv hospital received fourth doses of the Pfizer vaccine, part of an ongoing experiment where thousands of Sheba employees have had regular serology tests — which look for antibodies in blood that fight infection — beginning from before their first doses in December 2020 to track the vaccine’s efficacy.
Enough of them tested positive for coronavirus two weeks after their fourth jabs to indicate that the level of antibodies needed to protect against infection from Omicron was “probably too high” for the vaccine to induce, said Regev-Yochay.”
Financial Times
Should we believe the Israeli Pfizer study or the NZ experts pushing the government’s elimination strategy?
Omicron has changed the face of Covid and you would expect a government that regularly talks up their ability to pivot would actually change direction, but you’d be wrong.
Some countries, like France with 300,000 new daily infections, “gave final approval to the government’s latest measures to slow the spread, including a ‘vaccine pass’ that will replace the current ‘health pass’. It is intended to tighten restrictions on people who remain unvaccinated.”
Others like Denmark, despite 20,000 new cases daily, are easing restrictions.
“Infections with the omicron variant are milder, and the situation in intensive care units is under control, Health Minister Magnus Heunicke said. He said that though cases remain high, the curve of new infections is leveling off. More than anything, Denmark relies on a high vaccination rate — more than 80% of the people are fully vaccinated, and almost 55% have received a booster shot. The health minister announced that particularly vulnerable population groups will soon receive a fourth vaccination.”
DW.com
The UK is relaxing Covid protocols with Omicron daily cases trending downward while NZ follows its well-worn path of self-mutilation by locking the place down for a handful of cases. A familiar practice the Ardern Government considers ”leading the world”.
“After just nine confirmed Omicron cases, Ardern then plunged the entire country into red alert, a form of lockdown that bans large gatherings, enforces mask mandates, makes Covid passports compulsory if you want to live normally as part of a ‘two-tier society’, and reintroduces work from home orders.”
Dan Wootton writing for the Daily Mail
National’s new leader Christopher Luxon has a golden opportunity to stamp an indelible mark on voters by turning off the scaremongering tap and introducing Covid sanity, but has he got the cojones to do more than just talk about it?
