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@crucial said in Coronavirus - New Zealand:
I don't get the attacks on the media. The whole'media are lying', 'Media are the problem' stuff.
The media hyperbolise, make stuff up or hide stuff to ensure support for their preferred politician or viewpoint and/or demonise those they don't like For example, newspapers spiking stories on the Wuhan Lab theory in case they're seen to support Trump. People notice these thngs.
And anyone who questions the integrity of the media is more often than not called a conspiracy theorist, populist or stupid by the same media.
What the media have been doing is pointing out fact AND calling out misinformation. That's not political. That's doing their job.
That depends on who's paying them
I ask because I cannot see what the media have done in NZ to deserve that tag.
This is from The Guardian New Zealand. I've posted the last two paragraphs. The last para is a humdinger of a reasoned, unbiased, fact-based world view.
But what distinguishes Ardern and her Labour government’s time in power is that she has been forced to confront a series of rolling crises. The virus chief among them. Her successful handling of the outbreaks in 2020 saw her secure the first mixed-member proportional representation majority at the 2020 election. Her somewhat successful handling of the latest outbreak means her numbers remain relatively robust. This is an achievement in itself when the virus is slowly spreading across the country, the vaccine mandate begins to bite as a small number of people lose their jobs, and more people than at any other point in the last ten years are uncertain about the country’s future direction. Former president Donald Trump, British prime minister Boris Johnson, Italy’s Matteo Salvini, Hungary’s Viktor Orbán, Brazil’s Jair Bolsonaro, and their contemporaries across the world are reactionaries and authoritarians even the most committed accelerationist would struggle to invent. But where their respective countries can offer nothing more than the exhausted rearguard of radical centrism – president Joe Biden, UK Labour leader Keir Starmer, and so on – New Zealand offers a straight up social democrat. Ardern is imperfect, and her government usually struggles to implement its agenda, whether housebuilding or climate change action. But one aspect where the prime minister and her government excel is dealing with an immediate crisis. For that, most New Zealanders are thankful. And for the time being, the polls will hold because of it.
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@frank said in Coronavirus - New Zealand:
I don't get the Jacinda praise for Covid.
All she did is lockdown an island nation over and over.
Big whoop.Agree. (except the nation has only been locked down once)
I think the early praise when less was known about the virus was partially warranted. We had a long period being one of the few 'normal' places to live.
Management of things since then has been a case of making it up as we go along. Some good, some bad.
Vax rollout although slow starting has been very well done with %s way above those predicted and I guess a big part of that was people buying in to the approach.
Border management has been a mess from the start.Hard to know how an another govt would have feared/ I guess the Nats may have been more like the UK. More desire to get things 'unlocked' but along with that would come pressure on health services and more deaths. There may have been more yo-yoing in and out of restrictions as infection rates got to more than we can hande.
I guess that's the big difference between this govts approach and much of the world. They are fixated on trying to stop things from happening while others have let things happen then acted on them.
Whether that is the right approach probably depends on your personal mindset which is why it divides down political lines. -
@taniwharugby said in Coronavirus - New Zealand:
Uh oh, the sky isnt falling!!
Due in part to the vaxxing, boostering and restrictions as explained in the article.
Much of the previous modelling was a case of 'if we don't do this then this will happen'. We have done things so the result will be different (lower)
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I agree the media have been very easy on St Cindy. A lot of the coverage has been cringeworthy. I also hate the way she is so chummy with them. It is a very small press gallery and I posit that when the PM addresses you live on TV by your first name and makes jokes about your weekend some of your neutrality is eroded. Just human nature. It also seems that the same handful are called on. Quite masterful manipulation of the media.
However I don't agree with your implication that NZ has been in lockdown after lockdown. Speaking of media this appears to me to be a case of northern hemisphere media behaving in exactly the same manner as their counterparts in NZ are but from the opposite position. Just as NZ media are falling over themselves to say how great NZ's pandemic response has been so too are overseas outlets running very biased reporting on how bad it has been. Anything to discredit it.
There is a myth being perpetuated that NZ has suffered through hellish lockdowns whereas the opposite is true. Apart from the external border life has continued on as normal for most of NZ apart from around 10 weeks of the last 2 years. Even Akl has only had a hard lockdown for about 4 months. This would make us one of the least locked down countries, but that's not what I read from overseas.
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@crucial was more a refreshing change from the doom and gloom articles, and also makes it seem that some of the modelling was simply take overseas City X per captia infections and extrapolate the data to NZ per capita, without the other variables.
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@taniwharugby It's all about the R rate. I had a polite discourse with a lunatic on another forum who had a very detailed and competent spreadsheet showing a ginormous number of cases and deaths that he used to justify the beatification of the Blessed Saint Cindy.
I can't remember who had developed the spreadsheet but it was a credible outfit. The screaming moron had inputted an R rate of eight!!!! When I tried to point out the idiocy of this he called me Trump supporter who cared nothing for peoples lives He totally failed to see that his argument was vacuous as a result of his input.
NZ has loads of uninhabited islands Couldn't we ship all the doom n gloomer henny penny's to one and the flat earth anti vaxers to another and leave the rest of us to just get on with our lives?
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@crucial said in Coronavirus - New Zealand:
@taniwharugby said in Coronavirus - New Zealand:
Uh oh, the sky isnt falling!!
Due in part to the vaxxing, boostering and restrictions as explained in the article.
Much of the previous modelling was a case of 'if we don't do this then this will happen'. We have done things so the result will be different (lower)
Yeah that’s why Cindy is getting world wide wraps, our govts response is consistently used as best practice example. You might not like her politics, but she is an excellent communicator and has held together the nation pretty well. Obvs we’ve now got pretty much to the end goal, and once this Omicron wave has passed things will have to ramp down. In fact they already are
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@machpants
"Businesses will self-assess against criteria to join the scheme."Fuck sake. Does this government never learn? Are they too afraid to define what industries or too incompetent? Or both?
Might as well do away with self-isolation all together coz every business is suddenly going to meet the required self-assessment threshold....
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@dogmeat said in Coronavirus - New Zealand:
@machpants
"Businesses will self-assess against criteria to join the scheme."Fuck sake. Does this government never learn? Are they too afraid to define what industries or too incompetent? Or both?
Might as well do away with self-isolation all together coz every business is suddenly going to meet the required self-assessment threshold....
Perhaps they're just smart enough to implement a system that does exactly that? That way they can blame business for the increase in cases...
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@antipodean oooh Is cynicism your super power
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@dogmeat said in Coronavirus - New Zealand:
@antipodean oooh Is cynicism your super power
Well I think you are both right, defining a loose framework for people to self assess means you can take credit if they do it right and blame the business if they get it wrong. This is then publicised without ever blaming their own original framework which may have also only been defined that way because they were afraid and incompetent to make a decision.
This is a common political strategy now, its about staying in power
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@dogmeat said in Coronavirus - New Zealand:
@antipodean oooh Is cynicism your super power
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@hooroo said in Coronavirus - New Zealand:
Someone just got arrested wearing white socks and sandals! I hope that was the reason alone! Dickhead
EDIT: Cheers @Duluth I didn't realise I was posting in wrong thread!
I thought that arrests were being made for filming in portrait.
Coronavirus - New Zealand