Here we go again. Groundhog Day.
I saw the headline that the PM was “frustrated”. Really? She's frustrated? How do you think the “team of 5 million” feel?
Because actually, despite her insistence on continuing to use this line, there is no team of 5 million. There’s a good chunk of New Zealanders taking Covid seriously, scanning, using the app, isolating when they’re supposed to, but there’s also sadly a selfish group of people - as evidenced by this latest case in South Auckland - who couldn’t give a stuff.
Don't isolate, won’t test, don't follow the rules, are happy to jeopardize everyone else’s health, wellbeing and now livelihoods.
The PM said not to play the blame game, she said not to point fingers - but that was right after she said herself that these people had let us down, that the new case had broken the rules while he should have been isolating - instead going to the gym, a mall, a supermarket, Burger King and Polytech.
She said this behaviour created 'multiple high risk situations'. But let’s not assign blame.
Actually, if we are to assign blame, I blame the ineptitude of the Ministry of Health. The handling of this latest cluster has been a shambles. It’s been bungle after bungle. Slack contact tracing, ineffective communication, this 'high trust’ model they keep running has been shown up for what it is - a disaster. High trust, low enforcement- which seems this governments mantra for everything these days, has proven detrimental and extremely costly to every New Zealander.
We are in lockdown because of someone ignoring the rules, yes, but it's the Ministry who've dropped the ball here. And they know it.
The PM looked exasperated at that hastily called Saturday night press conference. She looked angry and frustrated. When asked if this lockdown is a direct result of them not handling this cluster well enough in the first place she revealingly said “not necessarily” - that's not a convincing 'no'.
There are many who will just blame Covid for this, say it’s such a tricky virus. But we need to take the blinkers off and look beyond the virus itself and start looking critically at the real issue - the handling of it.
Countries are functioning in direct correlation to how their leaderships have handled Covid. It’s not so much the virus but our response to it.
We didn’t hustle hard enough to get to the front of the vaccine line, we are not vaccinating fast enough, our contact tracing is not gold standard - emailing people who don’t respond and waiting for them to spread the virus further before acting is not a proficient way to handle anything. We have fiddled while Rome burns.
All we are left with when leaderships sit on their hands is knee jerk reactions, waiting until the horse bolts before trying to fix anything.
It's an incompetent way to run things, and now each and every one of us is paying the price for that.
Kate Hawkesby is a political broadcaster on Newstalk ZB - her articles can be seen HERE.
2 comments:
Well said Kate !!
The messages being passed out by various parts of the government, Ministry of Health and Healthline are confusing. There should be one message. If at risk stay at home. There is no two ways about it. If this message had been clear and unified there would be no question. Rule breakers could have been jailed. Instead we have Pollyanna saying one thing; Ashley and Chris another and a phone line telling another. They have made us all look fools. No community of 5 million; a total bungle.
As you say Kate, there is no such thing as a team of 5 million. No country in the world could claim to have 100% compliance with their Covid plan because humans don't do 100% at anything. The best you can hope for is that a very high % follow the plan and the small non-compliant minority don't catch it. That's what has happened up to this latest case.
I'm not sure we can blame the delivery timing of the vaccine on this government. Let's be real - NZ is a very small country, had very low cases and deaths, so why should we be prioritised.
I think the reason Jacinda was looking so pissed off at her recent press conference was that she could see cracks appearing in the only thing this government can claim to have done successfully in her time in office. That must be very worrying for her because she's got no other "successes" to back this up. Jacinda has been the face of Covid, she campaigned almost exclusively on it at the last election, and it was the only reason she got a majority Labour government.
All the money is riding on one horse and it's stumbled on the final strait. Considering this governments pro-racist agenda and authoritarian regard of democracy you're kind of hoping it falls and breaks its leg. Only one thing to do - shoot it and put us out of our misery.
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