Professor Robert MacCulloch: A Police State for the "Next (Inevitable)" Pandemic?.....

Is Sir Ashley Bloomfeld Arguing in the NZ Medical Journal that this Nation should be Turned into a Police State for the "Next (Inevitable)" Pandemic?

In the latest edition of the NZ Medical Journal, former Ministry of Health employee, Ashley Bloomfeld, who was head of our health system during the pandemic, has written a paper called "Pandemic Prevention, Preparedness and Response: Are We Better off Now than Pre-COVID?". The paper seems to argue that Kiwis are now better off. The authors seem to have missed something called the "cost-of-living-crisis", which has seen GDP per capita - that is, Kiwis personal incomes - decline more over the past several years than even during the Global Financial Crisis. That decline is directly attributable to policies implemented during the pandemic that never traded off economic & health outcomes. The underfunding of our health system happening now is collateral damage.

Eliora: Bloomfield Is Behind It Again

It’s hard to believe the former Director General of Health again is promoting a harmful substance and threatening those who do not comply.

The Tauranga public turned out in large numbers fronting up to the newly democratically elected councillors to voice their disapproval of Dr Ashley Bloomfield’s directive to put fluoride in the residents’ unfluoridated drinking water. The room was overcrowded and the atmosphere electric. Many had to move into the foyer and the ‘health and safety’ irony of the situation wasn’t lost on the crowd. A lot of booing took place.

Eliora: At Last, It’s Coming Back to Bite Them in the Bum

Watch These Three Declarations Backfire

In March 2020, then Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern told the country she had all the legislative means and enforcement powers to tell us what we could and couldn’t do. The doctors in New Zealand were told they must be positive about the Covid-19 vaccine. New Zealanders were told they must affirm the wishes of a child or young person wanting to change gender. Three forceful declarations.

Ananish Chaudhuri: The collateral damage from our zero Covid mindset

Ashley Bloomfield was Knighted recently for the role he played in New Zealand’s Covid-19 response. His response relied primarily on the use of extensive and stringent lockdowns.

But were our lockdowns worth it and was our covid response appropriate? A Royal Commission of Inquiry is currently underway to establish lessons learned from the country’s Covid-19 response.

Guy Hatchard: Sir Ashley Bloomfield is Incorrect

New Zealand has suffered the worst health disaster in our history and it is not over.

Is this due to miscalculation, subterfuge, or lies?

Sir Ashley Bloomfield was the Director General of Health and the public face of the government’s Covid policy. He retired last year and is now establishing a Public Policy Impact Institute (PPII) at Auckland University. PPII aims to shape the government’s future public health policy.

Dave Witherow: Here Is The News

Doctor Bloomfield, our Voice of Science, has announced he is retiring.

The job as been onerous, he says, and he is looking forward to a more relaxing life and fresh opportunities as an “influencer”.

 Some of us – a small, warped, scientifically-illiterate minority, no doubt – tend to think that Dr Bloomfield has done more than enough influencing already. And not just influencing, which, after all, leaves a bit of wiggle-room for the poor sod being influenced. Coercing, actually, would be a more accurate word for what Dr Bloomfield has been up to. Get injected, show your papers – Herr Doktor Bloomfeld knows all about that.

Guy Hatchard: How on Earth Did We Arrive at Where We Are Today

A couple of days ago I received a conciliatory reply from Dr. Ashley Bloomfield, our soon-to-resign Director General of Health.

Dr. Bloomfield agreed to submit some recently published scientific findings I had sent him to his “Science and Insights team to review it as part of their ongoing review of emerging data and evidence on COVID-19 and on vaccines.”

In another respect, Dr. Bloomfield differed from my analysis stating categorically “there are no ‘elevated rates of all-cause mortality’ in New Zealand” I wrote back begging to differ and stating my case from my statistical perspective.

I believe the statistical data we are currently seeing qualify as ‘unicorns’—they are so far from previous norms that they should raise red flags (I have discussed these in numerous articles including here and here and here and here).

So who is right?

Mike Hosking: Govt's Covid spin won't fool us anymore

Ashley Bloomfield was back Friday to spook you again, just like the good old days. The trouble for the Government's fear campaign is it's over. It’s a bust.

It's the evolution, or the anatomy, of a campaign that for a while was highly successful. A lot of us believed the fear and the predictions. A lot of us hung on every word of the epidemiologists as they became household names and seemed to have some idea of how the future worked.

After a while reality dawned on an increasing number of us when we started asking how come little, if any, of what they said came to pass. The accuracy was astonishingly non-existent.

Andrew Dickens: Poto Williams joins a growing list of ministers who appear to enjoy the baubles of office

And so we come to the end of a week where I have barely mentioned Covid.

A week where the Director-General of Health has resigned. And he told us he wanted to finish the job, Dr Bloomfield leaves his position in July.

With that departure date, you can get no better indication that this phase of the pandemic is coming to an end.

Which is not to say some new twist might yet emerge. But let's not go there until we have to.

And as the virus falls off our front pages we're beginning to see stories that were hidden by the fog of war Covid provided. A fog that protected senior ministers from scrutiny.

None more so than Police Minister Poto Williams. She's had a week from hell.

Barry Soper: Why there was no point sticking around for Ashley Bloomfield

Sounding like the politician he's become, the country's most famous public servant Ashley Bloomfield on Wednesday announced he was standing aside to spend more time with his family.

But like all announcements of that sort, there's much more to it than that.

Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern, who at times privately had a fractious relationship with the Covid-19 custodian, laid it on with a trowel, saying she had come to know the director general of health probably better than any other public servant, and describing him as a true servant of the public.

Bloomfield's resignation would have come as no surprise to Ardern though - it is understood she had been privately confiding, since late last year, that he'd be unlikely to serve out his contract which ends midway through next year.

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. 

Sir Bob Jones: Journalists Be Kind

In their typical pack-running imitative practise, our media have had a field-day slamming the Health Minister David Clark for allegedly, “throwing the Director of Health, Ashley Bloomfield, under the bus”.

This is rubbish. The failure of the checking system fell squarely on Bloomfield’s management responsibility.

To the extent the Minister was also to blame relies solely on an absurdity which I’ve written about for decades, of alleged Ministerial Responsibility.

This is an irrational practise we’ve inherited from Britain and it’s long past time it was scrapped.