Professor Robert MacCulloch: Hipkins Trashed our Economic & Social Fabric.......

Latest GDP data: NZ in Recession; One of World's Worst. Useless former Covid Minister Hipkins Trashed our Economic & Social Fabric. He should lock himself up.

Today's news headlines read, "Massive GDP fall: NZ in deep recession - ‘worst since 1991′". What's the cause? The economist who can best claim to have predicted the GDP numbers that came out today is John Gibson at Waikato University - one of our country's, and one the world's, best.

Professor Robert MacCulloch: Statistics shown to be wrongly estimated

Former PM Hipkins & Profs Bloomfield & Baker should be held accountable for quoting statistics that have now been shown to be wrongly estimated

Why are we still talking about Covid when many countries - like the US - have moved on? Well the US economy is currently booming and ours is stuck in the mud. The reason has emerged over time.

John Gibson: How Vaccine Messaging Confused the Public

Pivotal randomized control trials (RCTs) underpinning approval of Covid-19 vaccines did not set out to, and did not, test if the vaccines prevent transmission of the SARS-CoV-2 virus. Nor did the trials test if the vaccines reduce mortality risk. A review of seven phase III trials, including those for Moderna, Pfizer/BioNTech and AstraZeneca vaccines, found the criterion the vaccines were trialled against was just reduced risk of Covid-19 symptoms.

There should be no secret about these facts, as they were discussed in August 2020 in the BMJ (formerly the British Medical Journal); one of the oldest and most widely cited medical journals in the world. Moreover, this was not an isolated article, as the editor-in-chief also gave her own summary of the vaccine-testing situation, which has proved very prescient:

John Gibson: Lockdowns only slightly postponed deaths in New Zealand

The Level 4 lockdown imposed on March 25 2020 in New Zealand was the world’s most restrictive set of closure and containment policies at the time.

While designed to deal with Covid‐19, it was soon noted by public health academics that all‐cause mortality fell below historical rates about five weeks after the lockdown restrictions began. 

Deaths stayed below their week‐of‐the‐year averages for most of the next four months, avoiding the usual winter peak due especially to influenza.

This effect has been dubbed a “COVID‐19 response induced life gain” and some commentators argue that the tools used in 2020 against Covid could be used every year to deal with the winter peak in deaths due to influenza.