New Zealand went into covid panic mode about Omicron yesterday, exactly as I knew it would, because people have been found in the community with Omicron. It’s notable that they are vaccinated.
It’s going to be one hell of a rollercoaster ride for the next few weeks.
They are already talking about a ‘review’ on Wednesday, which means that a new bunch of strict rules will be announced.
They never even followed their own “Traffic Lt system” when they put the whole of the country into ‘Red” mode.
For the record, New Zealand has 8 cases in total in ICU (intensive care unit) as of yesterday.
The health system certainly isn’t overloaded, which is a perquisite for going into “red” mode.
Fortunately for me, I’m on holiday with the kids right now, so I’m not having to deal with hysterical people if I don’t want to.
The TV and radio is turned off, because there will be endless ad’s telling me how bad it all is.
So while everyone else was panicking and rushing off to buy toilet paper, we were relaxing at a beach with several other families with teenagers and had a BBQ.
We were a bit more organised this time with 3 kayaks, and a boat.
It was heartening to see some of the kids have a go at stuff that they were initially a bit hesitant about. One of the teens had a go at wake boarding for the first time.
Omicron will be in the country within a few weeks, and the Government is like a possum in the headlights with it’s indecisiveness.
In the meantime the PM is stressed out and just wants to get married.
The school year is due to start in a few weeks and the vaccine rollout has begun for 5 – 11yr old’s. On top of this is a shortage of teachers because of the mandatory vaccinations.
They are already making noises about delaying the start of the school year which is highly annoying because we had a 4 month lockdown last year which affected our kids education, and to some degree, their mental health
I’ve still been going to protests against mandatory vaccinations, but probably not for much longer. The crowd numbers are slowly dwindling and the average person on the street is literally scared to death of dying and aren’t open to reason. We have noticed thou that people are starting to get angry, and we think it’s because of the following…
Joe Public has been led to believe thru advertising, constantly changing narratives..
1/ Get the jab and all is good
2/ Get the second one, get a passport and you are ‘all good’
3/ That changed into ‘all good for summer’
4/ a third ‘booster’ is available if you want it
5/ you must have your third booster to keep your vaccine passport
6/ the third booster doesn’t do Omicron..
7/ to be continued…
At this rate, it’s only a matter of time before Joe Public realises he’s been had…
(bear in mind that in NZ, about 40% of people got the jab to keep their job, not for health reasons)
The hysteria is easily understandable, given that the government brought off the media with $55 million,
In some ways, the PM Jacinda Adern has created her own nightmare right at the start by abandoning the original Ministry of Health pandemic plan, took personal control, and followed the then current trend of lockdowns, which predictably, hasn’t gone well..
There has never been a cohesive covid plan in NZ, and decisions have been made according to what the polls tell them.
Given that the media has created mass hysteria in the last 2 years with headlines and stories that were never fact-checked, running the country by popular opinion was never going to be a good idea, which is why they are in a bit of a predicament of their own making.
This is why the rules have changed so many times, and everyone has got confused and over-comply to stay out of trouble.
This has led to companies firing unvaxxed people, and then not been able to replace them.
The question I ask myself thou, is which way will they go?
Blaming the unvaxxed is popular at the moment as demonstrated by the Canadian PM recently
Ending the wearing of facemasks and vaccine passports as the UK has? (it starts about 8 minutes in)
It’s all yet to be decided by public opinion and the polls (health doesn’t come into it)
All of this potentially creates a lot of uncertainty, but since we now know the current covid laws are designed to punish the unvaccinated and not about containing covid, it’s much easier to work out what’s going on.
This has meant a change in strategy for us, and we will concentrate on the kids well being and others in the same predicament.
I’m now part of a support group and have been organising sports events for unvaxxed teenagers, since they are now locked out of any official sports programs. A lot of these kids are now home schooled.
The good news is that we now have our own kids enrolled in an online school, which means their education won’t be put hold at the PM’s whim.
(This was a major worry for us, because discrimination is likely to happen at school).
It’s likely I’ll retire from work for a year or two, until the hysteria either dies down or moves back to climate change or something else.
So it’s now likely we will have the best house on the street, the best garden, and a freshly painted garage.
P.S. Oh, and I’ll be really fit from all the bike rides!
P.P.S I have a 0.0128% chance of dying from covid (thats from the UK stats), I’m good with that
P.P.P.S The kids have next to a zero % chance of dying from covid
It’s been very quiet in the media about covid and politic’s here in NZ for the last few weeks. Restrictions got lifted just before Xmas, and life has sort of got back to ‘normal’ for most people over the Xmas/ New year break.
We have spent this time with other unvaxxed families and now have a good support group going with weekly picnic’s, etc. We have also started organising events for teenagers to get together.
We went to a ‘picnic’ today with the ‘The freedom and Rights coalition’. It was very much a concert with a market attached to it, and had a very relaxed positive atmoshere. Food was available and was often free.
They had several speakers, The first one was a mother of 3 children who spoke about the issues of bringing up her kids in an environment where they are now effectively second class citizens.
One of her children was a leading student at his school last year. The school has now closed, because half of the teachers aren’t vaccinated, and aren’t allowed to be teachers anymore, because of the mandates.
The second speaker was a black man who grew up in South Africa under apartheid. He left South Africa for a better life and now he see’s the same thing happening again here in NZ. He spoke candidly about losing his 13 yr old brother in the struggles that went on for 47 years. He also spoke about Nelson Mandela – Wikipedia and Desmond Tutu – Wikipedia, who he had known.
There was then a concert with several bands, then we all went for a march to stretch our legs. The public reaction was pretty positive with many cars honking their horns in support, with some enthusiatically leaning out of their cars in support.
NZ’s Prime Minister is reputably about to get married soon, but has effectively gone into hiding with lots of security. The wedding will probably be hyped up in the media to be a celebrity event of some sort, and this will probably happen in the coming week.
It will be cynically used as a diversion, because there are several deadlines happening next week. Police, Teachers, and Nurse’s are due to lose their jobs if they haven’t been vaccinated.
The vaccine rollout for 5 – 11 yr olds also starts next week, so it could be a bit rough out there.
Interestingly, The CEO of Pfizer has now admitted the first 2 vaccines are useless against the latest omicron version of the virus..
Uncoffined 
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