Mike Hosking: Bloomfield and Health Ministry fail us yet again

 

How is that love affair with Ashley Bloomfield going for you? Did you get the t-shirt or the apron? 

For those who beatified him, idolised him, and told everyone how wonderful he was, just what were you specifically basing that on? 

I saw through him at the start of the campaign when he kept telling us how there was no issue with the distribution of PPE, despite doctors and nurses, who of course are well known liars, telling us there was none. 

It's been an ongoing charade. The flu jab rollout last year, the vaccine rollout that never happened when it should have because they didn’t order any in time, and the RAT roll out that still hasn’t happened because they stole them all when they woke up. 

Don't forget the astonishing tale that lasted a year of the Ministry refusing various media outlets a simple answer around a graph they gave Chris Hipkins, who told us it was the result of careful work despite the graph showing second jabs started before first jabs. And when asked what data had gone into that material, a mad yearlong game of obfuscation ensued, until finally the Ministry relented and coughed the truth. 

Those are but fleeting examples in a cacophony of BS, obstruction, incompetence, inefficiency, unprofessional behaviour, and just plain uselessness all led by Saint Ashley. 

And now, as if this wasn’t always going to be the way, a testing regime that is nowhere near what they said it would be. 

This year Ayesha Verrall, the same person who pre-MP days wrote that report about gold standard tracking and tracing, another shambles never properly delivered, she announced grandiosely that testing capability would be going from a max of 39,000 tests to 58,000. 

We have a rolling average of about 29,000 and the system is broken. The five-day result claim is shot, tests aren't being processed, they are at capacity, and RATs are being handed out left, right, and centre. This is not what it said on the box, or anywhere close. 

Further, the people processing the tests process all the country's tests for things like cancer, so guess what's happening to that testing. 

This is what you get when you have an incompetent Ministry relied upon by an inexperienced and incompetent government, and from a government that insists it knows best, runs everything with a maddening series of rules, finger pointing, and holier than though condescension. 

Businesses are closing left, right, and centre, because staff are at home. Most of them are perfectly well waiting on a test that isn't coming. The economy is grinding to a halt because of insane rules that imprison the well, just in case. Tests all backed up a system that they told us was one thing and yet again, is nothing of the sort.

Mike Hosking is a New Zealand television and radio broadcaster. He currently hosts The Mike Hosking Breakfast show on NewstalkZB on weekday mornings.