Bryce Edwards: Covid complacency could be a problem again in 2022

The school that one of my kids goes to announced today that they have gone back to compulsory mask-wearing. It’s a sign of where things are heading, with a second wave of Omicron surging across the country.

Understandably, this is the news that nobody wanted to hear. However, all the Covid stats are currently heading in the wrong direction, meaning greater restrictions may need to be imposed again to prevent disaster.

It’s not only unwelcome news for the public, but also a huge problem for the Government, which is highly allergic to increased Covid restrictions, and especially the idea of shifting the country back into the red traffic light setting. The Prime Minister seems to be doing her best to avoid discussing the Covid situation, but when confronted with questions she has been dismissive of greater restrictions.

So, this all raises the question of whether we are going to let Covid complacency catch us out again in 2022.

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.

NZCPR Newsletter: Parliament’s Arrogance

A society becomes totalitarian when its structure becomes flagrantly artificial: that is when its ruling class has lost its function but succeeds in clinging to power by force or fraud.” 
– George Orwell.

Over the last two years, Jacinda Ardern’s Government has instituted a raft of unprecedented emergency restrictions aimed at safeguarding our population from Covid-19.

In March 2020, using exaggerated modelling that predicted tens of thousands of deaths, Prime Minister Ardern made a Captain’s Call to abandon the New Zealand Pandemic Plan that had kept us safe during the 2009 Swine Flu epidemic, to introduce the first ever lockdown of healthy New Zealanders.

It turns out, however, that severely curtailing individual rights and freedoms creates enormous economic and social injury, with mounting evidence now showing that lockdowns have caused more harm than good.

Dr Shankara Chetty Interview: All You Need to Know about Omicron

In this interview with internationally renowned Dr Shankara Chetty from South Africa, Jean-Pierre Kiekens from Covexit.com discusses the Omicron variant, which is taking the world as a storm. Is this variant to be feared, or could it actually be a positive development in this pandemic, as mostly inducing mild disease, yet conferring post-covid natural immunity? These are among the timely and critically important aspects we discuss. 

Dr. Chetty is a Family General Medical Practitioner in South-Africa, with considerable experience with the outpatient treatment of COVID-19, having treated so far nearly 8,000 patients, in his outpatient practice, without any deaths or any need of hospitalisation or even oxygen. Dr. Chetty holds a degree in medicine and surgery and also has advanced education in genetics, advanced biology, biochemistry and microbiology. 

Kate Hawkesby: People need to stop living in fear of Covid

 

As was inevitable, my daughter’s school had its first Omicron case this week and in came the email notifying parents that a student had tested positive. They immediately followed that up with the very calm assurance that this should have no impact on school attendance, that all students - unless you’d been notified as a close contact - were safe to return to school, that health and safety protocols as per the Ministry of Health were being followed.  

This of course does not diminish the alarm that Omicron’s arrived on their doorstep. 

Kate Hawkesby: People aren't testing because we have Covid fatigue

 

As our Omicron daily case numbers started to trend down instead of the much promised up, I wondered if my theory last week is in fact more than just a theory.  

People aren’t testing. They’re not scanning in, they’ve turned off their Bluetooth on the app, they’re not reporting symptoms, or maybe they’re just asymptomatic. 

Either way, our Omicron surge that the doomsayers keep warning us about, that we are sitting in a red light because of, is still nowhere to be seen. And it may well be down to a variety of factors; some say it’s a slow burner, we haven’t ‘let it rip’ like other countries, so it’s just a slower start for us. 

Barry Soper: The virus will be the Government's undoing

 

Over the past two years we've heard it ad nauseam. We're a team of five million and we are constantly reminded to be kind to each other and yes, it's come from the self-appointed team leader Jacinda Ardern. 

Many of us retired from the team shortly after it was created and it now grates to still be described as members of it.   

It should come as no surprise to Ardern then why her popularity's on the wane – last week's One News Kantar poll gave her a miserable personal rating of 35, one percent lower than where John Key was when he decided to call it quits. 

Guy Hatchard: New Study - at last reliable scientific data about Omicron

A study of 80,000 patients with Covid during December 2021 presenting at the Kaiser Permanente Southern California healthcare system composed a mixture of Delta (16,982) and Omicron (52,297) patients. 

Hospital admissions were 222 for Delta (1.3%) and 235 for Omicron (0.5%). 

Rates of ICU admission among Omicron patients were one quarter that of Delta. 

No Omicron patients required ventilation and they had shorter hospital stays by 3.4 days (70% less than Delta). 

There were 14 Delta deaths (99.92% recovered) and 1 Omicron death (99.998% recovered).

David Cohen: In Fortress New Zealand, faith in Saint Jacinda is starting to fade

Jacinda Ardern recently told an American television host that she finds it ‘slightly offensive’ when outsiders assume every other New Zealander starred in Lord of the Rings. Quite so. New Zealand has only one real film star in 2022, and that’s the Prime Minister herself. But the way things are heading, she might best suit an adaptation of Lord of the Flies.

The place has gone mad. Many countries, even nearby Australia, have responded to the arrival of the Omicron variant by drastically easing many of their formerly draconian measures in response to Covid, in particular the widespread use of lockdowns, or what some might prefer to describe as mass house arrests. New Zealand’s government is not one of them.

Dr John Campbell: Study confirms omicron reinfections

Here is an analysis of UK study about Omicron, with NZ specifically commented on from 15 min. The point is made that people who have had COVID have BETTER protection than those who are vaccinated, raising the question, why so people who have had COVID need to get vaccinated? 

 

Kate Hawkesby: Omicron reminds us that Covid is in the driving seat, not us

 

As Aucklanders endured their last weekend of an alert level lockdown, waiting to move into our red traffic light this weekend, Covid reminded us that it’s in the driving seat, not us. 

Relative freedoms just a handful of days away, inching towards some kind of normality, and then boom, news erupts over the weekend of this new variant Omicron. 

With hope having been dashed to shreds over this past year, it’s hard to stay positive, especially when countries start restricting travel again, re-introducing self-isolation, and not ruling out a return to lockdowns. The familiar creep of dread washes over us.