Can someone explain to me New Zealand?

[idontknow54789]

Sorry for the ignorance/naivety here but can someone explain to me the reasonings behind such extreme lockdown measures in NZ? At the beginning of the pandemic they're approach was fully accepted but surely now with vaccines and omnicrom being a 'milder' form of covid they have to start setting sense? Is it about the health system? I understand there's a severe lack of ICU beds but is locking down so much really better for health? Can anyone explain it to me please?

I hope they don't fall, but if they do for sure I think the body count crew will have a tougher job forcing China to let it rip.

Why would anyone force China to do anything re COVID? China is a sovereign nation and has the right to choose its own domestic policies. They will eventually have to drop the zero COVID policies because of the transmissability of the virus itself, not because outsiders are going to force them to do anything in particular.

The body count in China WILL be pretty bad, but there's no easy solution to that one. China has "middle income country syndrome." It's wealthy enough to have large numbers of old people, and a fair number of middle aged men with a belly on them. But not wealthy enough to have lots of spare healthcare capacity knocking about. See also, Brazil, India, Mexico and other middle income countries. It's a difficult combination.

We have the highest teen suicide rate in the developed world and jacindas response to that was to seal the coroner's records for the next 5 years, so we won't know the death toll.

What?! That can't be the whole story? Surely?

OnlyFoolsnMothers

Whats the financial support for those affected by zero tourism, what happens financially when forced to isolate for 24days?

People don't test because they won't earn anything if they are positive and isolating

@SecondSwitchNZ so sorry to read about your son. I agree with your thoughts on the two-tier society and I am appalled by the ease at which so many people have gone along with it (I also live in NZ).

I’m also appalled at the one-way media portrayal of everything to do with this, and the total disregard for other impacts of lockdowns and restrictions, not least of which is the impact on mental health especially for young people.

A pp mentioned Ardern seems to like the attention from Covid and I think this is pretty plausible. She is utterly dogmatic. They’re rapidly painting themselves into a corner over a lot of their approach and guidance yet instead of recalibrating and course-correcting, her approach is to dig in further.

It’s laughable that anyone thinks our government care about our health and well-being.

Ardern says ‘be kind’ but really she means ‘be kind to those who we think merit your kindness (ie the vaxxed/the compliant). And while you’re at it, be quiet and compliant yourself’.

It seems to be we now have a split society as follows:

• those who are vaxxed and happy to keep doing what they’re told
• those who are not vaxxed
• those who are vaxxed who are asking questions, not on board with mandates and restrictions, not happy with segregation etc. many of whom (from my experience) are now saying they wont be having a booster.

To the pp above who mentioned people are afraid - yes some people absolutely are, no doubt because they’ve had almost 2 years of the government telling them to be afraid. Others prefer not to get sick and just want to get on with life. And of course there will be many variations of and between those two.

Even if Covid was to end tonight then NZ would have a lot of healing to do in terms of societal relationships, mental health and resilience, government trust, workplace culture/recruitment and more. Personally I’m not afraid of Covid (of course I don’t want to get it but I’m not afraid). I am deeply concerned about our recovery from those other aspects.

[quote SquirrelG]@Rangoon - Everyone I know is in the same position as you, and yet one or two posters seem to think they speak for the whole country when they say things like "No, we're not happy". A bit presumptuous surely. Actually the only person I know who is not happy is an anti-vaxxer![/quote]
The "we" I refer to is everyone I know. Presumptuous? Yep, probably. Also probably presumptuous to think the anti-vaxxer you know who is not happy is unhappy about different things to me and the people I know

What I (we ) are unhappy about is the fact that govt has had two years to come up with a plan post our first lockdown and haven't. Latest annoyance is for 21 months they banned the use/import of RATs, then finally relented late last year when they were successfully lobbied to let private in-home isolation. For the last month, we've been told yes, RATs have been ordered, they're on their way, theyre here. 20 million, 42 million, 80 million. Turns out they ordered stuff all and this week are now 'requisitioning' private stocks that non-govt businesses have ordered and imported as part of their business continuity plans. That's the sort of shit we're unhappy about. Is that what the anti-vaxxer is unhappy about?

Yes tourism was badly affected and it has been difficult. More New Zealanders are holidaying in the country so that has been some respite. There have been payments to badly affected businesses. We do not miss British freedom campers who have parked ringing around and monopolising public conveniences at beaches when not defecating outdoors, those not having self-contained campers, or being too cheap to use the self-contained facilities and pay the cleaning fee. Or spitting out their toothpaste in our rivers. They are too cheap to use a camping ground with proper facilities.

As for the person whose property was unrented, something must be going on because there is a shortage of rental accommodation in New Zealand.

As for the person whose property was unrented, something must be going on because there is a shortage of rental accommodation in New Zealand.

As someone who has been looking for rental accomodation this week I can vouch for that. Few properties, lots of would-be-tenants.

Also New Zealanders living abroad had a very long lead in period- months - where the government told them to come back and they could have re-entered without restriction.

That's just not true. The borders were closed with less than 48 hrs notice, after that the only way in was through a 14 day quarantine program. There were spots relatively readily available for about 6 months, but it was the same 6 months where it was almost impossible to get to NZ from many places on the planet, because there were not flights. This meant that for all intents and purposes, you could only come home if you were planning to weather out the pandemic there, and TBH who would have believed the borders would be even more closed 2 years later?

I'm not saying NZ's approach is wrong, but to say Kiwis could come home without restriction (especially after charges were introduced) is counterfactual

As for the person whose property was unrented, something must be going on because there is a shortage of rental accommodation in New Zealand

• What's going on, is I can't get a MIQ space to come to New Zealand and sort them out. I purchased them at the end of 2019 and intending to make them into holiday lets. They have increased in value so it isn't the economic deficit but they do need renovation even for the domestic market. And yes , I have tried to get quotes and work done remotely but as soon as I say I am abroad the prices treble. As a tax paying 3× vaxed citizen, I should be able to enter my country of birth.

@XenoBitch

Hopelessly aiming for Zero Covid

Well no, because they are transitioning to covid acceptance now.

They just waited until after vaccination because they wanted to minimise deaths, disability and general illness.

I'm not saying NZ's approach is wrong, but to say Kiwis could come home without restriction (especially after charges were introduced) is counterfactual
Exactly
I was locked in to country I work in initially
Then as there aren't direct flights and we weren't able to transit Singapore and all the via Australia routes shut
Then there was the very flawed MIQ system that I had no chance at beating the bots
Then the squid games version. I have entered all of the releases and only once got into the booking page. My kids valid NZ passports weren't recognised and the 3 available days for entry had no matching flights. Next time I played I was 8003 in the queue for 1000 rooms.

@SecondSwitchNZ

I am sorry about your son, that must be terribly hard for you all and seems very unfair. I hope you have an opportunity to appeal the vaccination exemption decision.

You said you worked as a nurse but I’m not sure if you worked in a hospital, GP, community or private setting. If you worked in a hospital then you would know that hospital beds are tight, in fact many hospitals are facing bed blocking situations. This is without covid running rampant. Imagine the bed situation if covid was running throughout the population unchecked. Yourself, a loved one, your neighbour, your friend may not have timely access to required medical treatment.

In regards to the vaccination mandate for health care workers. If myself, or family etc need medical attention then it gives me a little peace of mind to know that if I’m (or family etc) are ever in an immune compromised position that the health care team around me are vaccinated. Also, what do you think would happen to our health service if the those providing the care are unable too due to being unwell with covid?

You lost your healthcare position because you refused to provide proof of your vaccination status not that you don’t have a vaccine passport. You only needed to upload your vaccination status from the My Health portal to your employer. However, I suspect you possibly wouldn’t have done this either as your decision not to provide proof seems based on your ideology rather than the medium used to do so.

I am truly sorry about your son and the many other people who are in a similar position. I hope there is some form of offical review about these decisions that affect people’s lives so dramatically.

I'm in NZ. Neither locked down nor terrified of Covid, just living life as normal. However Frikonastick's post is correct, re the lack of capacity in our health system to cope with the level of hospitalizations seen in the UK etc. It's why the government is doing this, and why most people will comply with it. Nothing to do with team spirt or misplaced pride or communism. That said, I disagree with the way they have handled MIQ. No issue with closing the borders to tourists, but NZ citizens should always be able to return here.

It’s very easy to look at what is happening now at this very minute and to say it’s crazy. But that doesn’t take into account that NZers have lived a very normal life for almost all the past 2 years.
As well as issues with hospital beds, another issue is vaccination rates of the Māori population. They have been very slow to vaccinate and many in that community have health issues which mean they are more likely to be very unwell if they catch covid. There was talk at one point about whether the government should open up at 90 percent vaccinated or 90 percent Māori vaccinated. So that has been a factor too.

Right now I think they are trying to get booster rates high and get enough home test kits into the country to limit the impact of omicron.

What do RATs stand for? I assume they are what we call LFTs

@treeflowercat

The red restrictions don't seem to be nearly enough to stop Omicron.., Look at Germany and Holland - lockdown did little, and they didn't have a totally Covid "naive" population.

I live in NL and people are so fed up they don't follow the rules anymore. Plus nobody is afraid of omicron.

@Whichjab

What do RATs stand for? I assume they are what we call LFTs

Yes. "Rapid antigen tests"... the same thing as LFTs

I don't criticise any govt for how they've handled things. I don't believe any govt didn't try to do the best they could with the information they had and the infrastructure and economic conditions that exist in their country. So, please, NZers don't pounce on me when I ask a couple of questions.

Obviously covid is here for good now. Lots of tightly locked down countries, though, are struggling to open up their borders. I remember a cthread of posters talking about places like Singapore and Hong Kong. When a country opens, the covid numbers go up, obviously, and I understand the NZ's health system can't cope with that. So what is the NZ govt saying about its long term goal of opening its borders? Are they considering, as its summer, it might be a good time to start now before the autumn starts? Does it have a detailed path of target numbers, etc? Or is it just in a holding pattern until it knows more. (All understandable courses. I'm interested, not criticising.) And for people without symptoms isolating for over three weeks, do they get paid to be at home?

If your health service is so good that you can ring up whenever and get a same day appointment with a gp, there must be quite a lot of money in the system. Are there plans to redistribute this to hospital facilities?

It's really interesting to hear about other countries and the issues they face from people who actually live there. And it seems on here that, as to be expected, there is a mix of people happy with the handling of covid and the working of the health service, and those not, so its good to read both sides.

Also living in NZ. New Zealand does not have enough hospital capacity to deal with levels of covid seen in the rest of the OECD. They have an approx 75% actual vax rate (they BS'ed it up to 90%+ by calculating on the basis of population eligible for shots). If they opened the borders as OP and others seem to think would be good, given the near-complete lack of natural immunity, the not-so-perfect vax rate, and breakthrough infections, they'd be stacking the sick (and dead) in hospital parking lots. It's not like the ambulances can drive to the closest country with more capacity.

That said, they do not need to be doing what they're doing. Delta should have been the wake-up call to get serious about vaccination way back in April 2021. Instead they plodded along with vaccinations as if they had all the time in the world. Hence the current sad rate of NZers with boosters.

When MIQ (quarantine) space got so tight that New Zealanders couldn't get home when they needed to, they should have come up with intelligent solutions. For instance, fully vaccinated people who test negative could do (real!) enforced home isolation with ankle trackers. But no. The gov doesn't want to do anything draconian, so instead they separate people from dying spouses. That's somehow better.

They could have a much bigger public education campaign about masking up, social distancing, holding all gatherings outside. (It's lovely summer here, for God's sake.) NZers think masks are supposed to be chin protectors. One meter distancing for omicron is just ludicrous. Two is a bare minimum, but NZers don't even do one. Etc, etc.

The point being: by implementing ALL available public health measures: vaccination, masking, distancing, improved ventilation, outdoor gathering, effective contact tracing and isolation (they do have quite good income support, not enough to replace all lost profits) -- if they did all that, no, they do not need to lockdown to keep omicron at a low level. See Hong Kong and Taiwan.

But that's too unpopular / costly so they're apparently just hoping vaccination will be enough by itself to avoid the worst. The traffic light system's only real (unstated) purpose is to keep fatalities from overwhelming the hospitals. I'm watching our future progress with considerable interest...

@secondswitchnz

The whole point of herd immunity is so that people like your son are safe and don't have to get vaccinated.
I'm sorry your son is being treated so poorly by your government.

Oh, and the other thing NZ doesn't seem to be budgeting for at all is long covid. (NZ and all the other governments. They're not unique in this.) The current data indicates between 7%-12% or even 15% of infected people, symptomatic or not, wind up with long term life altering outcomes. That's everything from 'brain fog' to Type 1 diabetes to autonomic system dysregulation and it goes on from there. Vascular problems, ministrokes. Even big strokes. Blood clots. It really does go on and on.

There is, so far, little indication that vaccinated people are any safer from long covid.

We do not know enough about covid, or long covid, to blithely infect everyone and assume we'll all be fine. We do know enough to know it won't work that way.

Erm, they are not extreme

1. We are wearing masks, makes total sense
2. We are keeping our distance ….. again not a random request

3 We can travel between areas, shop, eat and hang out with others should you really want to 4 in 8 days time I believe all people in work places need to wear a proper mask, not a cloth one made by someone, not a bandana, not a t shirt pulled up but a proper mask….. and the problem with that is? They are even giving them out free for certain groups etc…

No one down here has written off millions in debt, created companies to assist with track and trace, creamed off the contract to their friends and pocketed the profit when the system didn’t work. Testing is available, for free and in a timely manner,. I can even get a doctors appointment, indeed DH had a 30 min appointment on Monday for the princely sun if 8 pounds! If that is draconian ….. perhaps I misunderstand the word…

Many kiwis and Uk/NZ citizens are raising more than an eyebrow at the depiction of NZ covid measures in the UK press and on the news. I think the UK has a bit more to chew on than pointing fingers down here, including the proportion of deaths between NZ and the UK.

I live in NZ, ( in a holiday destination) the measures are far from draconian, long weekend here and the kiwi tourists are arriving thick and fast, just wearing masks, keeping distance between groups of people ….

I will not be voting for Jacinda in the next election due to the stance on the trans issue, so am no apologist for her and the measures imposed and I don’t agree with the mandate, but understand it. What would be responsible journalism is people asking why it’s ok for our PM to have death and rape threats, Twitter seemingly doing little to find the perpetrators …. Could it be because she is female…. Now there IS a story.

You can view the NZ suicide stats here: stats

They are shockingly high but not a secret.

I've been happy with the NZ approach. Auckland City is 98% double vaxxed for over 12's which is a huge endorsement of the strategy IMHO.

MIQ hasn't been handled well but is essential. Our government has lived by their own rules. The elimination strategy was abandoned months ago but our Delta cases were down to almost single figures in Auckland before Omicron arrived.

Family in NZ are generally supportive of government, live relatively freely and feel they are safer there than here. Just sad that they can’t visit us nor we them in the short term.
There does seem to be a vocal minority on MN intent on depicting NZ as being run by a tyrannical, callous dictatorship, presumably because it isn’t doing the same as we are.

@borntobequiet

Family in NZ are generally supportive of government, live relatively freely and feel they are safer there than here. Just sad that they can’t visit us nor we them in the short term. There does seem to be a vocal minority on MN intent on depicting NZ as being run by a tyrannical, callous dictatorship, presumably because it isn’t doing the same as we are.

It’s interesting to read the mood in NZ from people there and what’s going on

It doesn’t have to be a chance to put a boot in like these sort of posts