The Australian Commonwealth Government COVID-19 Response Inquiry slammed that country's late "stroll-out" of the vaccine. It meant politicians viewed lock-downs as their only tool of control. According to the Sydney Morning Herald some of "the Inquiry's most specific criticism was around the delayed vaccine rollout ahead of the Omicron variant which swept through country at the end of 2021. “This meant our staged reopening occurred months later than it otherwise could have, with a direct economic cost estimated at $31 billion,” the Inquiry found". Similarly, the reason behind the oppressive Auckland lockdowns in 2021 were because Opposition Leader Hipkins & his PM considered vaccination rates too low.
They crushed a generation of young Kiwis, sent the cost-of-living through the roof, and caused much of the psychological and economic fallout we're still experiencing today. The pace of our vaccine roll-out was similar to Australia's - a pace slammed by Australia's own government as being unacceptable. Yet NZ's Royal Report says it was fine; hunky dory, just "slightly slow". Below is a graph comparing our rollout to 28 other countries - the European average and US. When will the spinning & public relations & communications game of those in positions of power stop? No wonder we don't trust Parliament, don't trust the Media, and don't trust "the experts" anymore.
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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.
1 comment:
Let's mention the elephant in the room here. Labour required Maori and Pacifica people to have first access to the vaccine while everyone else (apart from the elderly) had to hold on and wait, even when the vaccine was available. So the look down was caused directly by Labour's apartheid health policy. Any report that doesn't mention this will be a scam.
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