Come out of your shell, Ms Ardern!
As you read this piece of article, we are still under level-4 lockdown in Auckland. It has been around a year and a half since the pandemic reached our shores and we, New Zealanders for the first time experienced a country wide lockdown. This all happened too soon and too early since the deadly virus was a new phenomenon to the world, as it was kept a secret until it went out of control at its place of origin at Wuhan in China.
We New Zealanders have really been fortunate due to our geographical proximity on the globe otherwise things could have been much worse here despite of being a small population to manage. We must accept the fact that our government has failed in managing the pandemic effectively and the only solution to control the spread of disease they find is to impose lockdown. Well done Prime Minister Jacinda, but what price will the New Zealanders be paying for these lockdowns in coming time. The level-4 lockdowns put everything to a halt, and everything comes to a standstill. The economy takes a nosedive because of the prolonged and repeated lockdowns. We consider New Zealand an OECD country and to a country like India, a third world country. If we compare the vaccination statistics of both the countries today, we become a laughingstock for the world.
It was understandable when pandemic struck first time, as every country was caught off guard and no one was sure of how to deal with it. Now since a range of vaccines are available to contain the virus from spreading and to immunise the population, one fails to understand what stops the New Zealand government from expediting vaccination at a faster pace. If a country like India can vaccinate at the rate of, up to two New Zealand per day and bring the life to normalcy, why can't we do the same in New Zealand? Today, the whole world has come to terms that this virus is not going to go any sooner and we will have to learn to live with it. So, putting the entire country under strict lockdown and stop all the economic activities is not the answer to this problem. Government instead should have acted fast on its health infrastructure, created more resources, and add more health workers to expedite the vaccination at the fastest possible pace. It’s possible to achieve in a small country like New Zealand. It may sound a bit harsh, but it appears that this government is happy with the snail’s pace approach of the health ministry. We have several big outdoor and indoor facilities that could have been used as makeshift hospitals to mass vaccinate the whole country in 2-3 months’ time instead of dragging it for ever.
New Zealand government needs to come out of its slumber really soon. The world has moved far ahead of us, including our big brother across the ditch. We are not invincible, no country in the world is, so we need to act fast on our weak links. Our health sector today stands completely exposed and but for this pandemic, we perhaps would have never realised it. We are short of doctors, nurses, vaccines, and other medical supports so government should act fast in those areas and not look for cut-paste solutions of imposing lockdown every time. Government is already under heavy debts from world institutions and each lockdown costs government over a billion dollar every week. This only proves the point that lockdown is no more a solution of this problem.
It is still time; government should start working sooner than later, on the real issues. We need to accelerate the vaccination drive and pave the way to open the economic activities. Like most major economies of the world as we attain 80%-90% vaccination, we should also open our borders for the world. This can be done with some pre-health conditions and only for fully vaccinated people. We as a nation, cannot survive for long if we don’t come out of our shell, to go with the world. - Yugal Parashar
US expert criticises NZ's Covid-19 approach as unsustainable
A United States infectious diseases expert has slammed New Zealand's optimistic eradication approach, arguing it won't be sustainable in the long term. New Zealand must learn to ‘live with’ Covid-19 – US expert
Johns Hopkins University's Amesh Adalja told Breakfast he's never agreed with the approach adopted here and in Australia as he says the virus is likely to still be around in the next 10 to 20 years.
"If you take the abstinence-only approach, which I think is how we describe the New Zealand approach, you stunt the ability of the population to risk calculate, and you get into this situation where just a couple of cases has everyone's lives disrupted.
"You have to reflect what the reality of this virus is."
Adalja added he believes Covid-19 will still exist in a post-pandemic world and that countries will need to learn to live with the virus, expecting to record cases still.
He says countries will need to develop a "baseline" for the number of cases, hospitalisations and deaths linked to Covid-19 that it deems acceptable moving forward.
"Whenever New Zealand opens its doors to other parts of the world, they're going to have cases, and it's not something you can drive to zero.
"At a time where you have rapid testing available, have vaccines available, this New Zealand approach is wrong."
"This is not a virus that can magically go back into bats; there's no going back to a world without Covid-19," he said.
"It is a new virus in humans, and I think that the Australia and New Zealand policy has never really reflected that."
"New Zealand has had this attitude since the beginning of the pandemic with lockdowns, but they're not vaccinating at high rates; it makes you wonder what it was all for."
Adalja stressed that New Zealand needs to ramp up its vaccination process if it aims to have most of the population protected before opening up borders.
Vaccine Alliance Aotearoa Immunologist Professor Graham Le Gros also told Breakfast that New Zealanders "can't be in a state of paralysis forever" by being kept in lockdown. -with inputs from TVNZ, picture courtesy Triblive
