Current Events > New Zealand likely to confirm abandonment of covid elimination today.

(+) Yeah! (+)

It's been pretty obvious for the last few weeks that elimination is no longer the goal, but they've still been publicly claiming that it is. I reckon the press conference later today will either explicitly confirm it, or else say "we're still pursuing elimination" then go on to describe a suppression strategy and call it "still elimination". Knowing how Jacinda Ardern tends to operate, probably the latter.

The press conference (scheduled for about 4 hours from now) is viewable here: https://www.health.govt.nz/news-media/news-items/covid-19-update-4-october-2021-4pm

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Even last year, I was of the understanding it was mostly to keep medical services from being overwhelmed until we A. sourced a suitable vaccine, and B. got vaccination levels up.

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Sphyx posted...

Even last year, I was of the understanding it was mostly to keep medical services from being overwhelmed until we A. sourced a suitable vaccine, and B. got vaccination levels up.

Sort of, but the big deal here is that for the last few weeks it's been patently obvious they've dropped elimination, yet until yesterday they were insisting they were still pursuing it whenever questioned. (And it isn't the first time they've been doing one thing while saying another, either. Unfortunately, honesty is not one thing NZ's current administration is known for.)

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Okay, everyone (including myself at the time) was going on about Monday's presser being a big one, but I reckon today's is going to be the real major story. Further cases have popped up in Waikato, some of which are outside the region that was put into lockdown over the weekend.

Pretty much I can see three ways they go from here - option A, which I unfortunately suspect is the one they'll take, is putting all of Waikato back to Level 3, then acting all shockedpikachu.jpg when a case pops up in an adjacent region later this week or early next week. Option B, is just throw in the towel completely and go to Level 2 nationwide and accept that we're going to have a major outbreak. Option C would be to put the whole North Island back to Level 3, as a temporary measure until they can do Option B safely (it may be feasible to exclude Northland from this, but I think including it would be the safer option).

But yeah - I think this, not the announcement on Monday, is going to be what really determines the outbreak's trajectory from here.

EDIT: Link to the presser: https://www.health.govt.nz/news-media/news-items/covid-19-update-6-october-2021

EDIT: So Chris Hipkins is here instead of Jacinda Ardern. Probably not going to be a major announcement - likely to be another presser later today if any new restrictions are coming into place. (I could be wrong though, he has announced restrictions before, but it's not usual for anyone other than Jacinda Ardern to do it.)

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Trumble posted...

Unfortunately, honesty is not one thing NZ's current administration is known for.

Let's be fair though, they're not unique in this regard. Not by a long shot.

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Sphyx posted...

Let's be fair though, they're not unique in this regard. Not by a long shot.

Most New Zealand administrations are at least a little bit better than this one, though. Ironic considering these ones promised to be the "most transparent government ever", yet constantly get labelled by press and public (at least, outside of the party's diehard supporters) alike as the least so.

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I might have agreed with you if it weren't for the existence of the National Party.

They may be caught in a rut of blind opposition contrarianism and nitpicking right now, but I can't look at the clangers they've tried to pull off in the past and still say with a straight face that Labour are worse.

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