No country had vaccinated its citizens by the end of 2020, since no vaccines were available at that time. Former PM Ardern was lauded as a savior, winning a landslide election. Afterward, NZ's Covid response went pear-shaped. Once vaccines became available, NZ became one of the slowest OECD countries to roll them out, being bottom for many months. Here's the picture summarizing NZ's 2021 failure:
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By June 2021, the above graph shows that whereas nearly 50% of Americans & Europeans had been vaccinated, barely 10% of Kiwis had been. Faced with their failure to protect 90% of the population, former PM Ardern, Covid Minister Hipkins & Health Director Bloomfield freaked out. Their one-trick-pony tool was lock-downs & severe restrictions on civil liberties. Maybe it had worked in 2020, but there was nothing clever about that strategy in 2021 - it was a desperate attempt to undo the mistake of the late vaccine order. This Blog takes satisfaction in publicly disseminating that mistake, as we were one of the first, if not the first, to explain the reasons behind the late order and make a deal of it. DownToEarth.Kiwi is particularly grateful to Sir John Key for quoting from our Blog when he made his 2021 Hermit Kingdom speech that turned opinion against Ardern-Hipkins, ultimately leading to the fall of their government. Back then, Hipkins "slammed former PM Sir John Key’s ideas to transform the country’s pandemic strategy as an insult to New Zealanders". Shortly after, Hipkins himself was forced by events to transform that strategy and reverse course.
There isn't much more to say. As for the future, there's little value in the latest NZ Medical Journal Editorial by Mr Ashley Bloomfield arguing for even more stringent government force, in terms of full mobilization of the security services, for "the next pandemic". The lesson we learnt from Covid was that you can only play the lock-down trick for little over a year. Thereafter, patience wears thin. In the meantime, one must either develop a vaccine oneself, or have entered agreements to purchase them from abroad. The emphasis must be on a light speed roll-out, not snail's pace, which was the Ardern-Hipkins legacy. Bloomfield & colleagues should have learnt the lesson that without effective vaccines, a command-and-control strategy, which he's still promoting, but at more stringent levels, whilst maybe useful for brief periods of time, cannot be regarded as a long-term winning strategy. Should no vaccine become available when "the next pandemic" hits, as he describes it, indefinite lock downs enforced by the Army and Security Services will only lead to civil unrest & conflict. We learnt as much. Shame none of those observations will ever be part of "official" Covid enquiries, at least Labour Party initiated ones.
Click to view
By June 2021, the above graph shows that whereas nearly 50% of Americans & Europeans had been vaccinated, barely 10% of Kiwis had been. Faced with their failure to protect 90% of the population, former PM Ardern, Covid Minister Hipkins & Health Director Bloomfield freaked out. Their one-trick-pony tool was lock-downs & severe restrictions on civil liberties. Maybe it had worked in 2020, but there was nothing clever about that strategy in 2021 - it was a desperate attempt to undo the mistake of the late vaccine order. This Blog takes satisfaction in publicly disseminating that mistake, as we were one of the first, if not the first, to explain the reasons behind the late order and make a deal of it. DownToEarth.Kiwi is particularly grateful to Sir John Key for quoting from our Blog when he made his 2021 Hermit Kingdom speech that turned opinion against Ardern-Hipkins, ultimately leading to the fall of their government. Back then, Hipkins "slammed former PM Sir John Key’s ideas to transform the country’s pandemic strategy as an insult to New Zealanders". Shortly after, Hipkins himself was forced by events to transform that strategy and reverse course.
There isn't much more to say. As for the future, there's little value in the latest NZ Medical Journal Editorial by Mr Ashley Bloomfield arguing for even more stringent government force, in terms of full mobilization of the security services, for "the next pandemic". The lesson we learnt from Covid was that you can only play the lock-down trick for little over a year. Thereafter, patience wears thin. In the meantime, one must either develop a vaccine oneself, or have entered agreements to purchase them from abroad. The emphasis must be on a light speed roll-out, not snail's pace, which was the Ardern-Hipkins legacy. Bloomfield & colleagues should have learnt the lesson that without effective vaccines, a command-and-control strategy, which he's still promoting, but at more stringent levels, whilst maybe useful for brief periods of time, cannot be regarded as a long-term winning strategy. Should no vaccine become available when "the next pandemic" hits, as he describes it, indefinite lock downs enforced by the Army and Security Services will only lead to civil unrest & conflict. We learnt as much. Shame none of those observations will ever be part of "official" Covid enquiries, at least Labour Party initiated ones.
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.
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