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It’s become clear this week that we’re going to see more cases of COVID-19. Nobody should be surprised. That’s how a virus works and only somebody extremely dim would expect anything different. 100 days without community transmission is, to be kind, a false negative.
Before knee-jerking and locking us down again, our leaders should take several deep breaths, do their homework and evaluate properly what our way forward should be. We should resist strongly any attempt to put us in Level 4 lockdown. Indeed, we should be marching in the streets over the Level 3 Auckland has been locked into. Lockdowns don’t work, are not recommended by anybody except the foolish and can clearly result in more harm than good. The COVID doesn’t get you but the lockdown does.
“The elderly are alone, the sick are not seeking help, the newly unemployed are afraid, and people with mental health issues are without a network or health facilities to help.
Covid-Plan B
It all started with a hiss and a roar and with a worldwide infection rate that caused most of the world to go into a spin. That was understandable at the time, but unless you’ve been locked in a dark room ever since (or have been paying too much attention to the MSM), you’ll be well aware that countries with lockdowns have fared no better than those without – with the exception of New Zealand of course, and we’re about to find out just how artificial that expectation really was.
The daily media reports were all about China, Italy and Spain and massive numbers of deaths. Then it transpired that most of those dying were already well and truly sick and, in many cases, an average cold would probably have killed them — not to mention those who died “with” COVID rather than “of” COVID. The reporting was messy, to say the least. A motorcyclist who died in a crash in Florida was reported as a COVID death because his body tested positive. It doesn’t get much sillier than that.
The headlines now though have shifted significantly from numbers of COVID deaths to numbers of COVID infections. The deaths have levelled off (as they were inevitably going to do and just as they did with previous similar viruses) and the deaths are no longer the sensational story. Sad as any death is for relatives, it is as much a part of life as breathing and eating and living. The sick and infirm among us pass away just as they do every day of every week of every month of every year. Sometimes it’s accelerated by nature. Sometimes by accident. None of us can choose. It just happens.
It should occur to somebody in the media that reporting the seriousness of any new positive tests might have some value rather than just listing the numbers but no; the focus is only on numbers of positive tests. Recovery figures might also help. The IFR (infection fatality rate) which was originally thought to be extremely high, has dropped away to approximately the average for an annual flu outbreak. In other words, COVID-19 is really no more of a risk to most of us than flu.
It’s highly likely that eventually, we will find out that COVID-19 has been quite happily flourishing in our community despite the Prime Minister’s belief that we somehow managed to beat it into submission. People have been getting it, taking a few days off to rest and then, like the typical Kiwis most of us are, go back to work and get on with life. For 98% of the population, that’s probably as much as COVID-19 affects them. That’s how flu works each year and a proportion of the population gets immunity either naturally or from a vaccine.
Every day of our lives we live with the risk that we might die from something. We don’t stop going outside just in case. We don’t stop driving just in case. We don’t stop a whole bunch of other things just in case they end our lives. We face the risks and enjoy the lives we have. That’s as it should be.
So let’s stop the panic and fearmongering and enjoy the time we have with friends and loved ones and jobs and businesses. Encourage precautions by all means. That’s just sensible. But locking people up in their own homes for their own good, especially when it doesn’t fix anything, is just counterproductive and causes more harm than good.
How ironic that science strongly suggests we need to catch it to survive it, but the government is hell-bent on us not getting it at all. When they finally wake up and realize there’s literally nothing they can do that will change anything, they will have already irrevocably damaged things that actually are under their control. The economy will be stuffed. Good people will have suffered health issues because they were unable to get treatment. Mental health issues will leave victims all over our society.
LOCK DOWN IS NO ANSWER TO ANYTHING.
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