MikeB4: Reading some posts here I feel humanity and compassion are casualties of COVID-19. Not a good look at all.

True to an extent - but there is only so long you can deprive people of a significant proportion of their liberty, and in some cases their financial security, before patience is lost with those who won't take advantage of freely available medical protection measures.  And at least in Auckland, we are well past that point.  I would say that if the new system is not in place with the required certificates by the end of November, people will give up on restrictions in Auckland

shk292:

 

MikeB4: Reading some posts here I feel humanity and compassion are casualties of COVID-19. Not a good look at all.

 

True to an extent - but there is only so long you can deprive people of a significant proportion of their liberty, and in some cases their financial security, before patience is lost with those who won't take advantage of freely available medical protection measures.  And at least in Auckland, we are well past that point.  I would say that if the new system is not in place with the required certificates by the end of November, people will give up on restrictions in Auckland

 

Agree. Compliance has meant that elimination wont happen, so the race to replace lockdowns with vaccines has come a bit early. Freedom and business activity will soon occur, and that should bring the vax rates up re the Vaccine Cert. If there was a choice between just a few weeks lockdown or vaccines, that would be fine, but there isn't really a choice anymore.

MileHighKiwi: I'm really confused about the traffic light system. Why not just tie the vaccination rates the existing covid alert levels. We are going to have both systems in place across the country and it will be very confusing for some people. I think they have needlessly complicated things.

Articles Ive read show its confusing but they say it really isnt. Its just three alert levels, thats all. Same would apply if the existing alert levels were changed. We will easily get used to it. 

Dingbatt:

Good lord what’s next!

Pay for your own lung cancer treatment if you are a smoker?

Pay for your melanoma treatment if you didn’t use sunscreen?

Pay for coronary or diabetic care because you went to Maccas too often?

You are starting down a very slippery slope with that suggestion.

https://www.1news.co.nz/2021/10/22/northland-woman-reveals-herself-daughter-as-regions-new-cases/

SepticSceptic: 

 

Maybe. But with Covid you are putting everyone else at risk by not being vaccinated.
Smokers , sun worshippers and grease eaters are only putting themselves at risk.

No chance of aerosol or contact spreading of cancer or diabetes

You completely misrepresent my point, which is you either have universal healthcare or you don’t. The whole strategy is to “Protect the health system from being overwhelmed”.

All of the cases you excuse above are taking up a hospital bed that could be used by someone else. I could have just as easily used people who choose not to be protected from measles, whooping cough, polio, etc to illustrate that you can’t discriminate healthcare using people’s lifestyle choices.

Imagine arriving at hospital with a desperately sick child and the triage nurse saying “Okay let’s just have a quick look at their vaccination status before we admit them. Oh, they don’t seem to have had their MMR shots.”

Dingbatt:

 

Imagine arriving at hospital with a desperately sick child and the triage nurse saying “Okay let’s just have a quick look at their vaccination status before we admit them. Oh, they don’t seem to have had their MMR shots.”

 

I feel like the "It's a global pandemic, there's a free, easily accessible and safe vaccine that people have had access to for months" is probably important for context. 

Too much reliance on vaccine certs for jobs, freedom and the pressure to hit 90% has also pushed people towards vaccine cert fraud. What is the fraud rate going to be.

Something that has been bothering me is the bashing of health authorities for changing their recommendations over time, as in masks aren't important, then they are. The anti-vax crowd seems to take particular delight in this, as if it proves the authorities are hypocrites or don't know what they are doing.

But the crux of scientific method is postulating theories, checking them against observations, and revising on the basis of what has been learned. Science is a continuous, gradual process of making incremental changes as data is received. The media do not seem able to grasp that. They seize on every new theory and try to spin that into a magic cure. 

If masks were being downplayed initially, maybe there weren't enough of them for health workers and there wasn't sufficient data on their effectiveness. I think the idea was they might do some good, but it's not certain how much and we don't want them all being snapped up. 

As more data came in, more was understood about how the Delta variant transmits, and how masks can help prevent spread. This is how science works. Advice changes as more is learned. It does not mean the original advice isn't credible, just that it was based on the knowledge at that time.

I think the health authorities have probably made a lot of mistakes and misjudgements, including some where they should have known better, but I do not think advice that changes over time is necessarily an indication of that. It just means the scientific method is working.

MikeB4: Reading some posts here I feel humanity and compassion are casualties of COVID-19. Not a good look at all.

It was kind of a inevitable result of the policy settings. They are in their essence highly decisive.

• Inevitable the unvaccinated will be seen as holding back the vaccinated. - creating conflict between the groups
• Inevitable that unvaccinated regions will be seen as holding back DHB regions that have met the vaccinated target. - creating 
• Inevitable that Ethinic groups with low vaccination rates will be seen as holding back higher vaccinated ethnic groups (via the poor performance of DHB regions with high numbers of that ethnic group), creating risks of racism...

There is a decent chance this is by design - looking to deflect attention from the government for it's late vaccine roll out (vs the rest of the OECD), and the fact the vaccine certification system isn't finished yet...

Targets outside of Auckland are so hard, that we are going to be deep into 2022 before they are acheved (for example getting 90% of the west cost fully vaccinated when 2% of their population is in a separatist religious organisation is going to be super challenging) - Essential allows the government to wait for many months before picking their time to abandon their thresholds.

Policy settings seem now be greatly at odds with the "Be kind" message from early in the pandemic.

GV27:

 

Dingbatt:

 

Imagine arriving at hospital with a desperately sick child and the triage nurse saying “Okay let’s just have a quick look at their vaccination status before we admit them. Oh, they don’t seem to have had their MMR shots.”

 

 

I feel like the "It's a global pandemic, there's a free, easily accessible and safe vaccine that people have had access to for months" is probably important for context. 

 

For the third time, you can’t discriminate against people in a universal healthcare system. Otherwise you may as well sew a Star of David on people. Other restrictions outside the health system (ie vaccine passes) are fair game to drive uptake and limit spread for those who don’t.

Edit: Removed a comment.

Dingbatt:

 

For the third time, you can’t discriminate against people in a universal healthcare system. Otherwise you may as well sew a Star of David on people. Other restrictions outside the health system (ie vaccine passes) are fair game to drive uptake and limit spread for those who don’t.

 

Edit: Removed a comment.

 

That's the thing - we do. We do it all the time. Pharmac explicitly weights this when deciding what we fund and what we don't fund. That doesn't mean Pharmac is a fascist organisation. 

We also charge non-residents for care, ACC covers some injuries but there's limited assistance for people with chronic illness, we recover externalities of smoking through excises, and so on. 

As someone with a life-long medical condition for which there is a treatment available overseas (but not funded here due to cost reasons) I can tell you we very much do discriminate in a universal healthcare system and that's the only reason it actually works. This core absolutism about universal healthcare is directly at odds with how it actually functions. 

Call me a Nazi if you must, I'm over the constant Reductio ad Hitlerum every time someone suggests that maybe, just maybe, people who are going out of their way to make life difficult for themselves shouldn't be able to effectively reduce access for medical services for people who are doing what they can.