Govt tipped to bring forward full border reopening from October to July
nzherald.co.nz/nz/covid-19-omicron-outbreak-g...
nzherald.co.nzPosted May 10, 2022, 6:44 PM UTC
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nzherald.co.nzBleak winter ahead for many, and on many counts.
Flu, covid widespread, inflation, household incomes under huge strain, crime rates etc etc. Not a great time....
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I note how the "Labour" government seems to love making its announcements at business meetings.
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"Labour" government ironically been the most pro-asset owner and large businesses government in history.
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Given that we're still at about 10k cases with deaths still at 3-400, it's evident they're well past the point of control. With winter just around the corner, reopening in July all but confirms opening the flood gates. New variants be damned I suppose.
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Haven’t we had about a million reported cases since the omicron outbreak started? I’d say the flood gates are already very much open.
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I can't believe how blasé most people are now about Covid. Sure you'll probably be OK but there's a bunch of people who will die and even more who will get ongoing Covid issues.
I'll be the one wearing a mask everywhere for the foreseeable future.
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I don't understand how wearing masks is even contentious?
It's no more onerous than wearing a seatbelt and we're legally required to do that.
Surely it's the least you can do when interacting with strangers.
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Some people also got the shits when they were told to wear seatbelts.
There are still people who refuse to wear them, and only put them on when they think they are likely to be caught.
People are just dumb and stubborn.
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I don't understand how wearing masks is even contentious?
Because people are big fucking babies who can't even be moderately inconvenienced for the well-being of everyone else around them and themselves. Not wearing a mask is just a great indicator you're a selfish prick, it takes barely any effort and is at worst slightly uncomfortable and I say this after working 8 hour days on my feet with them on.
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Perhaps worth asking, why wasn’t wearing a mask mandatory before?
Covid isn’t the first airborne/droplet spread disease we have many of them, killing hundreds/thousands a year. But we didn’t require masks in almost all occasions in history.
What changed? Covid was going to cause a lot more excess deaths than those diseases.
Now it isn’t deadly enough for most people, most places to support masks.
At some point things are safe enough that you don’t need to mandate PPE all the time. We don’t ask people to wear helmets walking down the stairs even those a few unlucky ones will break their necks.
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At least seatbelts work as designed and don't cover your face and expression.
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I don't think they are. Most people just seem to be living their life and basing their actions on their own personal and extended family/friends' circumstances.
I'm not meaning to sound callous but people dying as a result of covid and ongoing related issues is just something that will be normalized going forward. The threading of the needle will be how to resume normalcy while protecting the vulnerable.
An initiative encouraging mask use if feeling unwell as an ongoing forever idea would be a good start.
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Some of them will always die. It's about avoidable deaths.
The simplest metric for recovery is how many ICU and HDU beds we have available, and we don't have enough to have a serious outbreak and not lose a bunch of people unnecessarily.
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The thing is, I don’t think “most” people are blasé at all. I think the media highlights a small vocal portion of society for the clicks and then we end up with a reactive government and poor policy. It’s incredibly disappointing.
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Our success was also our downfall. By the time omicron came our way, we still thought it was this super deadly disease which will kill us all.
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It is still a relatively serious disease, that is killing people at a very high rate and also leaving people dealing with symptoms/complications for months to years past initial infection (10% to 30% of all cases will have persistent symptoms after nine months). And catching it doesn't afford you natural immunity, in the UK about 90% of the population has had covid at least once and people are dying at a similar to higher rate than in NZ currently - and higher than anytime in over a year.
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"Coronavirus In US:The death count during the Omicron wave is about 17 per cent higher than that in the equivalent-length Delta period."
ETA. Missing context.
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Yes, and now you get to throw worldwide seasonal illnesses that NZ hasn't had in over two years into the mix, remember the RSV outbreak last year and how bad that was? That was just opening to Australia on a restricted, limited basis. This is going to be a clusterfuck.
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But the longer seasonal viruses are kept out the worse it will be when they make it to NZ again.
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Sure, but you don't want to do the initial introduction during Winter, I thought that would be obvious.
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We have the 4th highest death rate per capita in the world right now, and have for a few weeks. And cases are already climbing again. Baker and other experts don't think the extra border opening will make any difference since we're now the country other countries are worried about. When I visit my parents in the US in July I'll be a much greater risk to them than if they came here.
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Yes - because we held off a real wave of Covid here for so long and we're the last to get it - our stats are higher than everybody else who have already gone through multiple waves....right now. Our overall results continue to be excellent.
People are cherry-picking their stats when they say the NZ's Covid stats are among the worst in the world (today), while ignoring that number over the last couple years.
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Forget how well we did years ago. PANIC WE HAVE THE HIGHEST DEATH RATE RIGHT NOW!!!!!
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Yes I'm talking about right now, the current 7 day average of daily deaths per capita.
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Do you have a link for this?
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It's not about controlling it. It's about tuning the rate of serious infection that takes up a hospital bed.
We can't afford increased infections, we're already doing as much as we can. This is choosing the economy over some people's lives.
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Allowing double vaccinated tourists from countries where most people already have had the virus once or twice is not gonna clog up hospitals.
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Bit of bullshit there. Catching the virus doesn't do very much for your immunity. And by opening the borders more we'll get more of the variants, sooner.
Not sure why you think that tourists having had covid will do anything for us when we catch it either.
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It decreases your risk of severe illness a lot: https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/
Reinfections had 90% lower odds of resulting in hospitalization or death than primary infections.
And it doesn’t really matter if NZ is open to 70 or 200 countries, new strains are coming in anyway.
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Lol. You mean choosing some people's lives over other people's lives.
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Excellent. We must have greatly expanded the available hospital beds and cleared all waiting lists. The nurses and doctors are probably all satisfied with their wages now as well, and there are no vacancies needing to be filled in the health system.
Really, it's a sign of how well things are going.
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This gives us some breathing room too, since it's easier to close the border than to begin to consider increasing healthcare capability, once the next variant picks up.
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We've already opened to visa waiver countries, they're going to bring in any new variants and seasonal viruses already, I can't see this making a big increase.
I don't see tourist numbers really picking up until they remove the preflight test as it adds so much uncertainty and risk to travel plans.
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Finally!
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Too soon.
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Get rid of the stupid requirement of needed a negative test to entire the country.
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Within the month I reckon
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I am selfishly hoping for this one today.
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They will.
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Because you’re attempting to plug a hole in the titanic with chewing gum when the ship has already sunk.
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Because Covid is already rampant here.
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Look how many community cases there are a day.
Look at how many countries and airlines require a negative test… near zero. Everyone else is just getting on with it and so do we.
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Avoiding New and Improved covid will still give us benefits.
Esp with how hard it'll be to convince people to get vaccines to counter new variants as they start developing improved evasion.
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People won't book an expensive ticket here because even if they're over covid if they can't test negative the trip is off.
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Nah, you can get a certificate to say you have recently had COVID but have recovered, which covers you to travel. There’s also an antibody test I believe.
It’s still a faff though.
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You don’t even need it to fly to the cook islands.
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A long haul flight with Covid circulating around the cabin? No ty
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The airlines don’t require a negative test. I managed to get three international flights without catching it.
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Thinking we might actually have some snow by then given this mornings temps!
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Bloody hope so! I wanna go snowboarding!
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Now if only it wasn’t for these naughty supermarkets putting up their prices due to inflation rising cost of goods not enough competition, everything would be perfect. Better bring in a raft of regulation designed to shift the blame fix the whole economy which will make Labour look faultless deter new investment attract all the big players.
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Suppress local wages and give the housing/rental market some new legs. Just what New Zealand needs!
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anyone knows when offshore visa processing would resume?
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They are taking staff from the one off special residency visa to process all these non waiver visitor visas.
Presumably this would include whatever visa you are after, while further delaying the existing backlog.
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my visa has been in the processing queue for 2 years just bc I was stranded offshore, hmm
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Good job Labour. We need this boost to our economy
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Ardern says she'll be working from home for a bit.
"I’ll be working from home so anyone who watches question time, or is attending my Business NZ speech on Wednesday, you’ll still see me remotely!"
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PM leaves iso early to mix and mingle with the business elite while the hoi polloi have to stick to full iso?
Did you really think that was ever an option?
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They are shitfuck panicked about the economy.
Things are not looking great worldwide right now.
Look to the government moving rap9dly to get rid of any economic friction.
Oh, and China is rapidly blocking the fire escapes. This is the last shot at those international students .
Spot on.
Eh, its all going to go tits up either way
Trying to repeat the Key-English approach to economic management where government flood the economy with low wage labour and stop spending on infrastructure to stimulate the economy.
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