Last Tuesday evening, New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern declared she was again locking down Auckland, the nation’s largest city.
The cause of the drastic measure: Four family members tested positive for COVID-19. This was the first locally transmitted case of the virus in 102 days. Yet, now Auckland residents are being ordered to stay at home as those businesses deemed “non-essential” were forced to close for at least three days.
The handful of new infections led the country’s Director-General of Health, Dr. Ashley Bloomfield, to state, “We’ve been saying for some weeks it was inevitable that New Zealand would get another case of community transmission. This is a tricky virus.”
It should be noted that Auckland is a city of over 1.66 million and, as of last Saturday, an additional seven cases were reported, which brings the total of recent cases to 37. Prime Minister Ardern reacted by extending the city-wide lockdown for an additional 12 days.
As of last weekend, 22 had died from the virus in the entire country of over 4.8 million people or 0.0005 percent.
Despite locking down the country’s largest city, the Prime Minister assured New Zealanders the pandemic is “being dealt with in an urgent but calm and methodical way.”
On Friday, after announcing the Auckland lockdown would be extended 12 more days, she further advised New Zealanders, “Act as if you have COVID, and as if the people around you have COVID.”
Prime Minister Ardern, who is running for re-election and is leading in the polls, announced yesterday she was postponing New Zealand’s general election until 17 October.
TRENDPOST: To highlight what a major “freak-out” this second lockdown of New Zealand’s major city is, here is data showing thus far, COVID-19 is less deadly than the typical flu each year:
“Research by University of Otago, Wellington, professor Michael Baker and Dr. Trang Khieu has found that… more than 200,000 New Zealanders contract the flu each year. Of these, it’s estimated that 400–500 people will die either directly or indirectly from its effects.” Compare this to the 22 deaths so far from COVID-19.”
The New York Times continued its trend of hyperbolic, anxiety-ridden language to describe the coronavirus.
In Friday’s article about the new lockdown in New Zealand, the self-proclaimed paper of record’s headline was: “New Zealand Beat the Virus Once. Can It Do It Again?”
“Beat the virus?” In addition to the constant use of war-like language, as reported above, New Zealand has had a total of 22 deaths from the coronavirus. Compare this to confirmation by the Environmental Health Indicators New Zealand that air pollution from human-produced particle matter is responsible for the premature deaths of over 1,000 citizens every year.
TRENDPOST: Again, and again, the media hyperbole emphasizes “COVID cases” while virtually ignoring the fact that particularly among younger people who contract the virus, they display mild symptoms, if any.
Moreover, for people under 50, according to a Lancet Infectious Diseases study, well under 0.02 percent are likely to die. And, for those “50 to 59, 60 to 69, 70, 79, and above 80 years of age, the estimated infection fatality rates (IFR) are 0.6 percent, 1.9 percent, 54.3 percent and 7.8 percent respectively.”
As we have consistently reported since the outbreak of the COVID Hysteria, some 50 percent of virus deaths among western nations have been from people in elder care homes with the majority of the rest suffering from health conditions such as high blood pressure, heart disease, Type 2 diabetes, and obesity.
Thus, while it makes no scientific or fiscal sense to lock down the vast majority of the population, it does makes sense to provide extra protection for the most vulnerable listed above.
