Days after this Blog released its Two Minute Covid Inquiry, which argued Labour Leader & former Covid-19 Minister, Chris Hipkins, together with former PM Ardern, and Health Chief, Ashley Bloomfield, ordered the Covid vaccine late, which crushed the NZ economy and smashed trust in government as it forced them into an over-reliance on lock-downs in 2021, the Australian Covid Inquiry has released near identical findings, almost word-for-word:
The first wide-ranging inquiry into the nation’s pandemic response has found delays procuring COVID-19 vaccines cost lives and delivered a $31 billion hit to the economy.
In NZ's case, it was a $15 billion hit, which is why our health system is now underfunded, infrastructure crumbles & teachers underpaid. Australia & NZ matched each other in terms of snail's pace vaccine roll-out, probably because we copied each other, and didn't match world best practice. This Blog, and myself, were savaged by the Labour Government at the time, mainly via by its henchmen in the Main Stream Media, for daring to argue the late order had caused a calamity for NZ. Sir John Key defended us. NewsTalk ZB put me on their show. Noone else. The following lines from the Sydney Morning Herald are most telling:
Australians don’t need reminding of what it feels like to be subject to stay-at-home orders, .. five-person picnics, made to wear face masks outdoors or get vaccinated to go to work. Most lived through it. What is now clear is that they won’t do it again.
Not according to Mr. Bloomfield's editorial in the latest NZ Medical Journal. He says we need even more stringent lockdowns next time around, involving NZ's "security services" and full "security apparatus", which I presume means the army and SIS intelligence services. At least the tell-it-as-it-is Aussies state in their Inquiry that the main lesson is how the Ardern-Hipkins-Bloomfield style approach destroys society as we know it. These lines from the Australian Inquiry can be photocopied to the NZ experience:
Australians’ trust has been eroded, health systems are struggling & inflation pressures from government pandemic stimulus are still hurting the economy five years after the first COVID-19 case was detected, the first wide-ranging Inquiry into the national response has found .. The most disturbing finding from the Inquiry released on Tuesday is that trust among Australians has been eroded. Its so broken that surveys find 1 in 5 people would not get a vaccine offered by the government in a future health emergency. Only 3 in 10 had high trust in the federal government to have done the right thing at the height of the pandemic. This will be its most damaging legacy.
The latest Trust surveys in New Zealand record a similar across-the-board erosion of trust.
The Inquiry delivered a resolute verdict about how our leaders failed us. Trust started high. But as the months wore on and sacrifices piled up, they didn’t explain their actions. Nor were those actions based on evidence. Widespread school closures, for example, were never recommended by the Australian Health Protection Principal Committee. Children are still affected by hits to their mental health, school attendance and academic outcomes. Vaccine mandates are an even more concerning case study.
NZ doesn't need to waste money on Covid Inquiries. The Aussies have done ours for us. It matches what this Blog argued since 2021, as evidenced by our writings & radio interviews. Maybe more than any other institution, our Main Stream Media - Radio NZ, One News, Herald, Newshub (who phoned me to get stuck into my late-order-vaccine claims & discredit me) and Stuff - should take a look at themselves & ask why they sold out Kiwis by not objectively scrutinizing NZ's government during those times. No wonder you're bankrupting. No one likes you or trusts you anymore.
Sources:
https://www.smh.com.au/politics/federal/trust-is-broken-and-that-s-the-most-damaging-covid-legacy-20241029-p5kmbj.html
https://www.smh.com.au/politics/federal/covid-inquiry-finds-vaccine-strollout-cost-lives-eroded-trust-20241029-p5km5j.html
Professor Robert MacCulloch holds the Matthew S. Abel Chair of Macroeconomics at Auckland University. He has previously worked at the Reserve Bank, Oxford University, and the London School of Economics. He runs the blog Down to Earth Kiwi from where this article was sourced.
11 comments:
Wrong. The economy wasn't wrecked by ordering vaccines late (vaccines that have since been proven to be near-completely ineffective for their purported purpose), it was wrecked by lockdown policies and borrowing policies, the latter required due to the former, and the former a complete waste of time.
I.C. Clairly in even more on to it than he realises. Here's just one reviewer on the latest addition to my library: "The Pfizer Papers" by Naomi Wolf and Amy Kelly:
“No history of the COVID years—that is, no history of the 2020s nearly anywhere worldwide—could be complete, or even make much sense, without consideration of The Pfizer Papers. A masterpiece of research, this staggering translation of some 450,000 pages of internal Pfizer documents, carried out by well over 3,000 researchers, reveals in jaw-dropping detail the horrid truth about the trials of Pfizer's bioweapon—which is to say that it reveals the lethal falseness of the propaganda that has beclouded all the world (and, one might say, helped to kill the world) since 2020: that Pfizer proved its “vaccine” to be “safe and effective” (it was neither), and that only it and other such “vaccines” could “save us” from “the virus” (they could not, and certainly did not, but killed and crippled just as many people as that “virus” was reported to have done). And yet, despite its thoroughness and clarity—or, rather, because of them—this all-important study has been blacked out by the media worldwide.”
—Mark Crispin Miller, professor of media, culture, and communication, NYU
The collapse of trust in our political ‘leaders’ has nothing to do with the late arrival of ‘vaccines’ to this country. The damage was entirely planned and executed regardless. Perhaps the late arrival of the ‘vaccines’ was one tiny ray of sunshine, quickly extinguished by the brutal insistence on mass jabbing of everyone including very young, and virtually Covid-proof children. The steadily increasing illness trend is the legacy this country will have to suffer for years to come.
I.C. Clearly,
Hear! Hear!
"Safe and Effective Roadshow" with events being held during November in Dunedin (9th), Queenstown (11th), Nelson (13th), and Wellington (15th).
The late arrival of the vaccines extended the restrictions, but the loss of trust was to do with some people's distrust of the vaccines and/or the vaccine mandates, and the imposition of the traffic-light system despite the vaccines having arrived. I've noticed too that Prof McCulloch always refers to Ashley Bloomfield as "Mr Bloomfield'. You may not approve of him, but he is a Dr. After all, every appearance of Professor McCulloch on here comes with a mini-bio, presumably aimed at enhancing his credibility.
Ashley Bloomfield has a Bachelor of Medicine/Surgery double degree and a Master of Pubic Health. The 'Dr' is a courtesy title for people with the MBBS or MBChB who practise medicine.
We need a shake-up of academic titles as the title 'Dr' has been devalued by being used by too many people in too many fields. A Doctor of Philosophy is usually qualified in neither philosophy nor medicine, but is legally entitled to use 'Dr'. Ironically, the word 'Doctor' appears on a PhD's degree parchment but not on a 'medical doctor' degree parchment!
I'm perfectly aware of all that Barend. 'Philosophy' retained for a long time the Greek sense of referring to knowledge of any kind, but that sense has now mostly gone. But it's usual to refer to people with the MBChB qualification as 'Dr'. I assume Prof McCulloch is omitting to do that for a reason, but I may be wrong....
And before anyone mentions it, the Prof is of course "MacCulloch, not McCulloch'....
I understand it is very difficult for many to believe pharmaceutical companies like Pfizer have the characteristics of sociopaths and lied to us. We are accustomed to believing governments are dedicated to helping us not killing us off . We are trained up to be obedient to authorities . It seems wrong to defy them. I had a 'doctor ' who told me those who rise to the top in medicine, are bright but also total conformists to modern medicines ideology of dishing out Big Pharmas latest drug and treating them like miracles, saving humanity.
I also dislike the title doctor applied to people who have, unlike real doctors not done any original research or work , been peer reviewed etc. They are to me largely rather a pack of toadies with an exaggerated view of their own worthiness and sanctity and in some it seems a belief they are infallible.
May the whole truth about covid vaccines come out sooner than later so we can avoid the fiasco we had happening again.
Well said that man. The media and govt in collusion have broken the trust people have of authority.
In the long run public health will be worse off due to the incompetence of the govt of the day.
Post a Comment
Thanks for engaging in the debate!
Because this is a public forum, we will only publish comments that are respectful and do NOT contain links to other sites. We appreciate your cooperation.