mattwnz:

 

quickymart:

 

At least there's finally a plan in place for international travel again in early 2022. My friends from France will be able to visit :)

 

 

 

 

 

 

Possibly but it is all so fluid. If our health system gets overwhelmed, it won't be able to cope with an additional significant load from tourists. NZs vaccination levels still leave over a million people vaccinated.
We are likely going to get a wave of cases heading into winter next year like they are encountering in Europe. It makes all these people in the NZ media who have been saying the rest of the world is going back to normal, look like a joke. 
As more countries mandate vaccinations (heard one TVNZ reporter  refer to it is 'mandation' which has a different meaning:/) , it should hopefully make it easier for that to occur in NZ. These rules and risk levels over vaccination are open to interpretation and loopholes, and just creates so much complexity. Then the government have been contradicting the MOH over whether businesses would need to scan to authenticate passes.  Then the fines are ridiculous imo, considering we now have covid in the community and it can't be eliminated (at least not in Auckland), and it will be spreading throughout schools via unvaccinated children. But when the virus was able to be eliminated and we were in lockdowns, they didn't enforce the rules and let flouters get away with spreading the virus, and handed out very few fines. The fines they did hand out were wet bus tickets too. So much easier to just mandate it, and that also gets away from the whole 'two class' citizen thing, as everyone will be treated the same.

 

It is not a static thing, plans of mice and men and all that...

I agree with everything you have said. One thing that is not quantifiable, is peoples attitudes to the booster program. That will be a massive challenge as the six months arrive.

We see a very clear pattern the world over where people let their guard down, celebrate these naff freedom days, as though their is a static science in them, then face a vicious now fourth wave for many.

We hope that New Zealandders behave like the Israelis and line up for boosters, and we hope they do it in a timely fashion. This is a massive challenge. The Global anti facts movement is ever the threat to the rest of us.

I think we will be ok, but I see the next round, the booster round, as when things get real for NZ.

In an ideal world, the current numbers of vaccines are adequate to protect health care. We vaccinate little kids. Then when the booster round comes, we maintain. And most of all, we hope we are talking about a variant that is susceptible to the vaccines.

You are right to emphasize that we have nearly a million unvaccinated citizens right now, that really is the reason you cannot just say hey lets do what someone else is doing....well not unless we triple our health infrastructure by magic.