New Zealand sues Covid-Zero as right-wing idiots lose it

Health officials in New Zealand have said they are still pursuing a strategy of completely eliminating covid-19, including the use of aggressive lockdowns, despite the increase in cases in recent days. And that is driving right-handed people around the world crazy.

“It’s too early to throw in the towel. We have made it this far. It would be an absolute waste for us to abandon this now, ”Covid-19 senior health official Chris Hipkins said at a press conference on Wednesday.

“Of course we want to get to the point where lockdowns aren’t the answer to potential epidemics in the community, but we’re not there yet. And we’re not ready to give up until we get to this, ”continued Hipkins.

New Zealand reported 63 new cases of the coronavirus on Wednesday, the biggest jump since March, bringing the total for this most recent outbreak in the country to 210 cases. The government has announced that 198 cases are in the city of Auckland and 12 in Wellington. New Zealand currently has 12 people hospitalized with the disease, an increase of three since Tuesday. No one is currently in intensive care.

New Zealanders have been under a strict lockdown, known in the country as Alert Level 4, for the past eight days following the emergence of a mysterious case on August 17. New Zealanders are only allowed to leave their homes for a handful of reasons, including exercising, picking up essentials like food, receiving medical attention and getting tested for covid-19.

“While this is steady growth, it is not exponential. We know that our actions to slow the spread of the virus will start to see a slowdown in those numbers increase. And indeed, the fact that the increase is not exponential is explicitly due to the fact that we have implemented Alert Level 4, ”said another senior health official, Dr Ashley Bloomfield, on Wednesday. of the press conference.

New Zealand’s covid-zero strategy has seen huge success so far, with just 3,096 total cases and 26 total deaths since the pandemic began last year. The nation of five million people has been able to live a relatively free life, thanks to an extensive system of contact tracing and strict lockdowns when even a small number of cases emerge.

With the covid-19 incubation period of around 2 to 14 days, lockdown measures are unlikely to yield any real results for about two weeks, which is one of the reasons the right-wingers who are so quick to throw in the towel embarrass themselves.

For some reason, righties in other countries are furious that New Zealand has introduced recent restrictions to control the spread of covid-19. A quick search for “dictator Ardern” on any social media site will give you plenty of instances where right-wing idiots seem to believe New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern has somehow turned the country into Korea. North.

Journalist Glenn Greenwald, for example, a right-wing libertarian who is sometimes mistaken for a leftist, recently tweeted about New Zealand’s “president” telling people not to argue with their neighbors.

“Yesterday an Australian official ruled that citizens are not allowed to take off their masks outside to consume alcohol. Today the President of New Zealand orders citizens * not to speak to their neighbors *. They seem demented, oblivious to the costs of prolonged isolation, ”Greenwald tweeted after New Zealand was locked down. announcement.

The only problem, of course, is that 1) New Zealand has a prime minister, not a president, and 2) Greenwald has absolutely no idea what he’s talking about.

New Zealand has never experienced a prolonged lockdown that anyone would call “long-term isolation.” The country lived normally for the vast majority of 2021. And not “normal” like 50% catering capacity and constant masks. New Zealand went through the normal you might recognize from 2019, before the pandemic started – no masks, full stadiums, all wide open.

Just look at a few of these recent photos from the start of the year, if you don’t believe it.

And Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern’s plea was not to speak temporarily with your neighbors in an effort to stop the spread of covid-19, something most reasonable people would agree to.dated. Perhaps more importantly, 84% of New Zealanders support the current lockdown, according to last poll.

If New Zealand can be criticized for anything, it’s a slow rollout of the vaccine, but it’s another part of the pandemic that some people outside New Zealand seem to misunderstand. Again, Glenn Greenwald is a shining example of not understanding.

“I took COVID very seriously. I isolated myself with my family from the start, wore masks, got vaccinated the first day I could. But the refusal of policymakers to weigh the * substantial mental and physical damage from the ongoing restrictions, even in a post-vaccine world, is infuriating, ”Greenwald tweeted in a to follow on New Zealand.

Greenwald, as a wealthy man living in a gated community in Brazil, may feel like it’s a post-vaccine world, but most countries have yet to immunize the majority of their populations. About 1.92 billion people are fully vaccinated, which means that about 24.6% of the world has been vaccinated against covid-19. But New Zealand’s vaccination rate is only 19.4% at the moment, which you can certainly blame on the government’s slow roll-out and lack of urgency with so few cases.

Taiwan, another country that has pursued a covid-zero strategy, has not reported any cases of covid-19 on Wednesday, the first time the country has done so since May, despite the outbreak being caused by the alpha strain of the virus.

The current outbreak in New Zealand was seeded by a recent outbreak in Australia and genomic testing shows it to be the delta strain. New Zealand’s covid-zero strategy previously worked well when the predominant strain was not the delta variant, but we’re about to see how difficult it is to remove delta in a tightly controlled environment.