Cam Slater: Hipkins Extends Nanny State COVID Rules

If you ever needed a sign that this Government doesn’t trust you, it is the extension of mandatory isolation rules and the continuation of mandates and masking in the health sector. The rest of the world has moved on but the nanny statists of this country still want nanny to suckle them some more.

This on the same day that the US abandoned the emergency Covid rules. Clearly, Labour doesn’t trust you.

National Party leader Christopher Luxon says he would have returned to work earlier than seven days after testing positive for Covid-19 if it were not mandatory to isolate.

Luxon caught Covid-19 for a second time in March, saying it was “two or three days of really, you know, heavy flu”.

“But then I was RAT testing each day. The last three days I was negative and I was quite capable of coming to work and so, you know, I just think we need to move on … I was quite capable of going back to work and we need workers back in the workforce.”

The Government said on Tuesday that it was keeping the seven-day isolation policy for at least another couple of months, with modelling suggesting that abandoning it would see a significant increase in hospitalisations and deaths over the following six months.

Prime Minister Chris Hipkins said there was a “labour market incentive” to keep the seven-day isolation in place, to make sure people were not going back to work when still infectious. The Government is seeking advice on a test-to-release scheme, which could let people return sooner if they test negative.

NZ Herald

Luxon has the right of this. If people get the ’flu, or pneumonia, or some other virus they self-manage their sickness. You get to decide when you feel well enough to go back to work.

Covid-19 has been endemic in New Zealand for well over a year. We will never not have it. It should now be managed the same as any other infectious virus. On top of that we are highly vaccinated, and despite the wonderous protection of the vaccine 12,000 people a day are still catching Covid, and some are dying despite the assurances from Jacinda Ardern that you’d neither get sick nor die if you were vaccinated.

The disconnect is astonishing. Yet they are still pushing the vaccines on radio and TV.

England dropped mandatory isolation fourteen months ago and Australia six months ago. The vast majority of EU member states and US states have dropped mandatory isolation. We are an outlier.

It is a farce; the last vestige of control over you and your body, for an illness that actually never lived up to the scare tactics governments the world over engaged in.

I just can’t believe how scared the general population of New Zealand is of Covid. Many of them have had the ’Vid at least once if not twice but they still want to lock down the population. Jacinda sure did a great job on them, gaslighting and terrifying them into automaton-like compliance.

Enough already, all restrictions, mandates and rules related to Covid need to be removed in their entirety. People are now just using the ’Vid as an excuse for a week off work.

Time to move on from Covid, and this Government. But we still need to remember just what these clowns did to us and hold them to account for it.

Cam Slater is a New Zealand-based blogger, best known for his role in Dirty Politics and publishing the Whale Oil Beef Hooked blog, which operated from 2005 until it closed in 2019. This article was first published HERE