Coronavirus - New Zealand
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@taniwharugby said in Coronavirus - New Zealand:
@machpants there will be plenty who have no symptoms at all, some who have mild symptoms just staying at home, and some who with mild symptoms just go about thier day spreading it about.
There is zero reason for most people who get it, to get tested...maybe they need to start giving people supermarket vouchers for testing positive?
Siouxie and Baker saying it is more likely 5-8,000 new cases out there today...
Our testing station was overrun today. Mostly sick people as opposed to surveillance testing. Nothing better when you are crook to sit for an hour in a hot car
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I hope we learn from the rest of the world this time
Before we see real impact of our contact and isolation rules.
Mrs CF was watching the morning news shows. Saw a representative of supermarkets who said the government won't allow them to keep their own stockpile of RATs. They will require individuals to go to government run sites to register and collect a test. If this is generally the case it is farcical. Lack of access will result in people just not reporting cases
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As for the protest mob I think it is at the point now where Wellingtonians have to use their own right to protest and gather in large numbers to tell them 'Enough is enough' and 'Go Home'.
Physically showing them that they are in the vast minority may be the only way they will temporarily accept defeat.I'm getting a bit pissed off at the toothlessness of the police and council to be honest, and so are many others. If your average citizen overstays their parking spot by 5 minutes they are pounced on with a fine yet these fuckers can jam up the roads for a week.
I know it is a difficult situation to manage but the tactics since that day of trying to move them have been extremely weak and pandering.
This latest idea of asking (FFS) them to move their vehicles to parking we all have to pay for then having them ignore it is another bird flipped at the public.
Time to stop being nice IMO. The numbers aren't that big that they can effectively protect everywhere that they are. Move the mob around and spread it out. -
In Paris they used tear gas. I think they need to step up the enforcement. Give them clear warning so the peaceful, elderly and kids have a chance to leave and then get out the tear gas, batons and shields to get stuck into the ferals. Use the army to help tow and impound the vehicles.
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@mikedogz said in Coronavirus - New Zealand:
In Paris they used tear gas. I think they need to step up the enforcement. Give them clear warning so the peaceful, elderly and kids have a chance to leave and then get out the tear gas, batons and shields to get stuck into the ferals. Use the army to help tow and impound the vehicles.
On one hand the reports are that many of the extremists have gone and this is now a mum and dad peaceful protests but on the other they are still worried about riling up a violent situation.
If it is a peaceful protest then a straight out instruction that vehicles (which have no right of protest) must be moved or they will be removed at cost should gain some action. They are only still there because the owners think nothing will happen.
'You have until 5pm to move vehicles from the roads or they will be impounded' should be stage one. Take away the portaloos as well FFS. -
I think this has probably harmed the opposition to the mandate. People I talk to a re really pissed off that this mob have been indulged and have lost patience.
So the government gets a fail for management of the protest but support for their mandate has probably strengthened.
Massive fail by the protester rent-a-mob
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I didn't really give the mandate much thought before. Because it's not really a mandate it's more several mandates of varying levels of inconvenience.
But, I'm the opposite of what dogmeat describes above.
I think the protesters are right, but am almost sure that 90% of them have to come to 'being right' via the wrong reasons. IMO.
5% of NZ adults have decided no to get vaccinated. That is 200,000 people. That is 200k who are being affected somewhere on the scale of 'inconvenienced' to 'losing their job'.
For a vaccine that has great benefit for personal health, but has very little societal impact if 5 to 10% remain unvaccinated.
Also, the mandates were initiated back at the time when 24% of the population were ineligible by age anyway, so even if there were reduced transmission benefits, these were marginal.
So, in summary. I don't think the inconvenience of Wellingtonians using the bus interchange and the bus route north via Molesworth St - outweighs 200k other NZers.
I think forcing the government into either the choice of an 'unkind' confrontation, or putting up with a messy occupation. Are wins either way for that movement.
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Also. I'd have more faith in the government's "They'll be repealed soon anyway" answer if they hadn't been so conservative in their post vaccination border and MIQ policies.
Back here in about August/September, I was shrugging off the foreign ferners growing complaints about the border with, 'well it will be open(ish) in literally about 6 weeks to 2 months anyway, so chill .....'
But it hasn't, so I can see no reason why the anti-vaxxers , who are probably 103% more conspiratorial than me anyway, will believe there will be any quick end to any of the mandates without some sort of direct action.
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@rapido I was talking about the broader NZ population rather than the protesters themselves.
I think opinion has hardened against the protesters and that they are damaging the anti-mandate argument by association. What I am hearing is a groundswell of 'dirty fucking hippy' type comments.
I disagree with your comment about the relative inconvenience.
The protesters don't represent all of the 200K people who aren't vaccinated. I have an unvaccinated staff member who is all in favour of the water cannon being turned on them because he thinks they are a bunch of ferals. Plus its not just commuters that are being inconvenienced. I have sympathy for residents and businesses in the area.
I believe implicitly in an individuals right to protest and have been arrested and convicted for precisely that reason. However this isn't all about anti vax or anti mandate. It's a broad church of 'anti' all sorts of things as can be seen from the placards.
they are now achieving nothing. I believe they have made their point so No I believe the inconvenience to Wellingtonians outweighs the (now) selfish posturing of the protesters.
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@rapido have there been any official numbers of Nurses/Teachers etc who have lost thier job due to the mandates?
Is it inline with the 5% of everyone else, or are they higher/lower?
I mean the whole point was to get to 90% right, we exceeded this, so you could argue the mandates weren't even necessary.
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@taniwharugby I guess it's the whole protect the vulnerable. If you were a chemo patient you probably wouldn't be overjoyed to think that your immuno compromised body was being cared for by an unvaxxed nurse even if 95% of the rest of the population was triple jabbed.
Preventing unvaxxed from going to a bar or cafe. That I have an issue with.
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@rapido here's a question to mull over though.
Should a person's individual right to choose override another's right of safety eg if my elderly mother was to be in hospital should she be in an environment of less risk of catching Covid than it would be if there were unvaccinated staff? She doesn't get a choice.There are various studies but the consensus is that the risk of unvaccinated people catching and transmitting the virus is much higher than vaccinated.
So yeah, they have a right to choose but what about the patients, children etc that they come into contact with?
The big question is where to draw that line. You may say OK doctors/nurses/teachers need vaxxing but is it then OK for hospo sites?
My solution would be that businesses themselves can choose and display that they are a vaccinated/tested environment and then customers can choose, but services like schools, hospitals etc remain mandated.
Mandates aren't a new thing. NZDF service people are mandated on a number of vaccinations and have been since forever. -
@dogmeat agree to a point, but you could have the unvaxxed Nurses (lets assume it is 10% of the staff?) doing other tasks (esp not with the highly vulnerable) and what is the extra risk to kids from Teachers?
I've just never been comfortable with the mandates, I can understand the reasoning behind them, but still doesnt mean I agree with them.
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How are vaccination mandates any different to other health and safety ones apart from it being a 'medicine'?
You are mandated to pass a driving test before legally driving. There are mandates around PPE equipment in high risk environments.
Mandates therefore aren't really the issue. Vaccination is. Not allowing yourself to be vaccinated (and yes I know there can be valid reasons) is a person's choice but they can't expect the health and safety of others to be compromised because they choose to ignore or disbelieve facts.
You have a freedom of choice, you just need to understand the consequences.
NB: I would expect that those with genuine reason for not vaxxing are managed properly.
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@bovidae said in Coronavirus - New Zealand:
It's culled out those doctors and nurses who I would question why they were in the health sector to begin with.
Ha ha, true.
I remember an artricle on stuff last year right at the start of the process about a small rural King Country school "may have to close down" as only a 2 teacher school and both were anti-vax. I was thinking, well, who'd want to send their kids to a school with such dumb teachers.
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@dogmeat said in Coronavirus - New Zealand:
@taniwharugby I guess it's the whole protect the vulnerable. If you were a chemo patient you probably wouldn't be overjoyed to think that your immuno compromised body was being cared for by an unvaxxed nurse even if 95% of the rest of the population was triple jabbed.
Preventing unvaxxed from going to a bar or cafe. That I have an issue with.
Yeah. It's unpicking the cancer nurse being mandatory vaxed from the 'can't use your council library'.
And TBH. If you unpicked one now from the other ... it probably wouldn't de-escalate the 'movement' very much.
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12 year Olds cannot play sport right now if they're not vaxxed. That's is huge over reach for something that offers those 12 year Offers little benefit to them, with uncommon but severe risks.
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@crucial said in Coronavirus - New Zealand:
How are vaccination mandates any different to other health and safety ones apart from it being a 'medicine'?
You are mandated to pass a driving test before legally driving. There are mandates around PPE equipment in high risk environments.
It's the bill of rights, and the right to refuse medical treatment.
The mandates that impose on that have to be justified. To me, that's a time bound, and effect bound requirement. Early in a pandemic, when vaccination is effective at suppressing spread (noting that ability drops with time), it's arguably a justified imposition.
As time goes on, though, that justification drops. After this Omicron spike (where it doesn't like the presnece of unvaxxed won't change the spread rate much), it gets even harder to justify keeping them in place.