Jacinda Ardern sued over lockdown

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#2482577 13-May-2020 10:24

BarTender:

And I think the response from the PM and MoH says everything in the facial response.

And the exchange today.

https://youtu.be/ih2HiB248FQ?t=2876

If they the government and MOH are lying or being selective then they seem pretty bemused by the suggestion.

I don't think they are. I don't think they need to, or have time to, or that any sane person would take that risk.

Mike

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#2483362 14-May-2020 08:28

MikeAqua:

BarTender: If they the government and MOH are lying or being selective then they seem pretty bemused by the suggestion.

I don't think they are. I don't think they need to, or have time to, or that any sane person would take that risk.

But didn't you say that

MikeAqua: Fair point. Politicians (of all stripes) don't want accurate data. They want data that supports their position.

These two seem to be conflicting statements depending on how someone interprets it.

I would say at the moment all competent politicians want extremely accurate information irrespective of their positions as to put a political spin or to misrepresent health data right now could have dire consequences.

That is no to say that economic data can and will be spun various ways depending on your political colour. The government will say its bad but could be worse and we have a plan, the opposition will say the economy will self combust unless we have significant cutting of all services apart from the pension.

It's going to be an interesting day today.

Happy Level 2 everyone.

Fred99

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#2483434 14-May-2020 09:59

We saw the other day how a news journalist - who must have been asleep during past MoH/Govt briefings where it had been clearly explained - wrote a story alleging that the MoH had been deliberately "fudging" figures on the numbers of "hospitalised" patients for some reason. They weren't and in any case why would they fudge that? It would have been pointless as "everybody" in the hospitals would have known that there were more rest home patients in some hospital facilities than the entire number of officially hospitalised C-19 patients being reported.

Yet that ended up as a leading headline on the "Stuff" website - it should have been recognised as a non-story and dropped. When there's no story - but they print it anyway knowing (well they should know) that it'll undermine confidence in the Ministry, because people seem to like conspiracies - it strikes me as "fake news". Oh - it could have been worth a mention that they'd prompted MoH to revise the way they reported hospitalised cases so that rest home transfers would be included and reported as a separate figure - which is a job well done by the journo - but it's not a front page scoop.

When investigative journalists manage to get stories like that past editors and on the front page, it gives me no confidence that they'd be able to investigate and report on "real" fudging of figures / data-dredging - as if they expect it's going to be that obvious, they're probably not looking very hard or critically. The best deliberate data-dredging isn't going to be so obvious.

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#2483538 14-May-2020 10:17

Fred99:

We saw the other day how a news journalist - who must have been asleep during past MoH/Govt briefings where it had been clearly explained - wrote a story alleging that the MoH had been deliberately "fudging" figures on the numbers of "hospitalised" patients for some reason. They weren't and in any case why would they fudge that? It would have been pointless as "everybody" in the hospitals would have known that there were more rest home patients in some hospital facilities than the entire number of officially hospitalised C-19 patients being reported.

You can assert this a million times and it won't make this true. First of all, news media don't just report for the benefit of people who work in hospitals; if there are X number of people actually physically in hospitals, WTH is your difficulty with just being straightforward and say that number? It's not up to the citizenry to go and keep themselves glued to the frigging TV and observe every line coming out of Bloomfield and his staff's mouths. And the media also has to work to fundamental realities of life: yes, some people just like to read headlines and "X number of people still in hospital Note that X does not include [rest home patients..........]" is unnecessarily complicated. For heaven's sake, there's a giant bloody body of case law saying that even advertising headlines for commodity garbage that read literally true but may nonetheless create an overall impression of the facts aren't allowed in the context of advertising for basically crap. Are we aiming so low for the quality of the civil service that they should be given the licence to do worse than that?

The media hasn't been perfect but it's about damn time the MoH come under some heavier scrutiny. It's absolutely incredible how few people seem to be outraged at the utterly lawless, incompetent and unreasonable behaviour that has been exposed by the Christiansen case. And these people had the gall to congratulate themselves after the fact for getting their initial decisions "right" if considered under their illegal framework. They've done more than enough to undermine themselves in the minds of people who care about the rule of law and basic decency.

But by all means just keep asserting and repeating this point.

Fred99

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#2483563 14-May-2020 11:01

MoH had already explained (weeks prior) that rest home transfers weren't included in figures for "hospitalised" C-19 patients. They (Stuff reporter) asked for the figure, and MoH promptly provided them. It's not "breaking news" worthy of front page conspiracy theory.

MoH NZ is reporting (cases) extremely thoroughly - "over-reporting" compared to most other countries and WHO reporting.

The "Christiansen case" was a cock-up unrelated to the allegations of MoH misreporting case data.

Fred99

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#2483608 14-May-2020 11:14

There's a story to do with MoH "case data" worth investigation IMO. That's how a "new" case (PCR confirmed a few days ago) was added and attributed as "imported" when the person returned from overseas 57 days prior to testing positive. That's very unusual. There's either a simple explanation (ie they reported a date wrong), or there's an issue - they've found a very unusual case, or they've attributed a case to "imported" when the possibility that it was local CT probably can't be excluded. If it was local CT - then that could (or should) have been considered when deciding to shift from L3 to L2. If I was a journo - I'd want answers to that.

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#2483629 14-May-2020 11:59

dejadeadnz:

Fred99:

We saw the other day how a news journalist - who must have been asleep during past MoH/Govt briefings where it had been clearly explained - wrote a story alleging that the MoH had been deliberately "fudging" figures on the numbers of "hospitalised" patients for some reason. They weren't and in any case why would they fudge that? It would have been pointless as "everybody" in the hospitals would have known that there were more rest home patients in some hospital facilities than the entire number of officially hospitalised C-19 patients being reported.

You can assert this a million times and it won't make this true. First of all, news media don't just report for the benefit of people who work in hospitals; if there are X number of people actually physically in hospitals, WTH is your difficulty with just being straightforward and say that number? It's not up to the citizenry to go and keep themselves glued to the frigging TV and observe every line coming out of Bloomfield and his staff's mouths. And the media also has to work to fundamental realities of life: yes, some people just like to read headlines and "X number of people still in hospital Note that X does not include [rest home patients..........]" is unnecessarily complicated. For heaven's sake, there's a giant bloody body of case law saying that even advertising headlines for commodity garbage that read literally true but may nonetheless create an overall impression of the facts aren't allowed in the context of advertising for basically crap. Are we aiming so low for the quality of the civil service that they should be given the licence to do worse than that?

But I think the explanation that Dr Bloomfield gave was a perfectly reasonable one: https://youtu.be/ih2HiB248FQ?t=2876

"Most people will make an assumption around their health status if they are in hospital because of COVID rather than if they need to be in a particular facility."

How hard is that to understand, as to me it is pretty clear.

Was the person receiving "hospital" / high level equivalent care in the rest home that they were in prior to COVID: Yes

Were they transferred from the rest home into the hospital due to staffing shortages at the rest home: Yes

Were they transferred from the rest home into the hospital due to becoming sicker therefor needing a higher level of actual hospital level care: No

So were they counted as a hospital admission as their condition had deteriorated to the point they actually needed hospital care: No

Was the MoH happy to make the distinction between the two and report both different numbers publicly: Yes

How is this a massive failing on the governments part where they are making in my view the very logical distinction between someone who is isolated because they are have tested positive to COVID, if that person has a nurse for whatever reason should they also be counted as receiving hospital care?

What about if someone had been committed to hospital for psychiatric reasons or who were in a corrections facility and were in in good health also happened to test positive to COVID? They were just being isolated in hospital and if there was sufficient staff in the facility they came from they would have remained in their original facility rather than being moved.

It shows to me that the media are trying to find a problem or mis-reporting where no such issue exists.

MikeAqua

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#2483744 14-May-2020 13:09

BarTender:

These two seem to be conflicting statements depending on how someone interprets it.

Not really.

There is a difference between selecting from hypothetical competing models, which was the context for my second comment you have quoted, and actively data dredging. The latter is what Fred thought I was implying. My first quote I was saying that I don't think anyone is data-dredging. And again: I don't

An example is when the govt will present one statistic on issue x and the opposition another statistic. By remarkable coincidence the govt's stats make them look good, the opposition's stats make the govt look bad. We have surely all noticed this over the years ...

The politicians in my example haven't picked those indicators because of their interrogative value, but because they support their view. Accuracy isn't the objective, support for a position is. In a nutshell my contention is that politicians use data the way a drunk uses a lamppost - for support rather than illumination.

That's a very different contention than saying politicians analyse data in biased, which is what happens in data-dredging.

Mike

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#2483932 14-May-2020 17:49

This is another interesting opinion on the legality of the level 3/4 provisions. It comes down more on the government side than some others I've read

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#2484204 15-May-2020 08:53

Handle9:

This is another interesting opinion on the legality of the level 3/4 provisions. It comes down more on the government side than some others I've read

Quote from the article: "When basic liberties are involved, officials and courts should err on the side of preserving those liberties. But they must also take heed of the purpose of the statute and the community the law protects."

At the end of the day five million New Zealanders did not have to go through the disease and death experiences other countries had to endure. So I am ok with that.

It's all fine shouting now but had the government acted differently and we had deaths on a UK scale I'd like to think these same people would be shouting the opposite.

There's no way to making everyone happy.

Then there's the rabid cadre of American racists shouting "New Zealand is running a Communist state with Stasi-like powers for Police" and - surprise! - New Zealanders that repeat this kind of crap on social networks because they are easily influenced idiots.

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#2484206 15-May-2020 08:57

Handle9:

This is another interesting opinion on the legality of the level 3/4 provisions. It comes down more on the government side than some others I've read

The arguments here are essentially the same ones that Justice Peters used in her conclusion that the Two Numpties habeas corpus motion should be denied.

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#2484223 15-May-2020 09:24

freitasm:

Then there's the rabid cadre of American racists shouting "New Zealand is running a Communist state with Stasi-like powers for Police" and - surprise! - New Zealanders that repeat this kind of crap on social networks because they are easily influenced idiots.

Conspiracy theorists always seem to think the government is some kind of highly efficient monolithic Big Brother bureaucracy devoted to turning them into robot slaves. Some governments may well aspire to that stereotype, but I don't believe ours is one. No doubt some parts of it would like to make their jobs easier by gaining more control over certain human behaviours, but I believe our authorities are more benign than malevolent. I also believe that they already have enough trouble performing their existing functions and effectively micro-managing the thoughts and deviancies of our highly individualistic population is probably well beyond their competence.

I have no problem with our authorities temporarily overstepping their legal powers in an emergency to serve the common good. I do not see that as the start of a slippery slope or the end of our civil rights. I do not believe those elected and appointed to serve us want to become our puppet masters. This is not America and people need to get a grip.

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Fred99

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#2484228 15-May-2020 09:31

I'll be accused of whataboutism for this, so preemptively defend myself by agreeing that there's an element of that - for sure - and some of the players are still there on different sides of the house. I'm guilty.

OTOH maybe some reflection on the response to the last large scale disaster in NZ when a national disaster recovery plan was found to be lacking is appropriate. When government actions and interpretation of the inadequate legislation (EQC Act) were found to be not legal by the High Court - did government accept those findings, change what they were doing, and move on?
How did damage claimants fare in general when making OIA requests of government departments (ie EQC) and their agents (Fletcher EQR)?

I had a quick look at Parliament TV the other day - tuned in when Nick Smith was talking about "transparency" and "accountability". Gerry Brownlee walked in front of the camera on the way to seating himself. I had to turn the TV off.

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#2484233 15-May-2020 09:38

Fred99:

I'll be accused of whataboutism for this, so preemptively defend myself by agreeing that there's an element of that - for sure - and some of the players are still there on different sides of the house. I'm guilty.

OTOH maybe some reflection on the response to the last large scale disaster in NZ when a national disaster recovery plan was found to be lacking is appropriate. When government actions and interpretation of the inadequate legislation (EQC Act) were found to be not legal by the High Court - did government accept those findings, change what they were doing, and move on?
How did damage claimants fare in general when making OIA requests of government departments (ie EQC) and their agents (Fletcher EQR)?

IIRC that was under the Fifth National Government of New Zealand.

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Fred99

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#2484238 15-May-2020 09:50

freitasm:

Then there's the rabid cadre of American racists shouting "New Zealand is running a Communist state with Stasi-like powers for Police" and - surprise! - New Zealanders that repeat this kind of crap on social networks because they are easily influenced idiots.

Deliberate re-ignition of race-war is a manifestation / consequence of the class war that's been waged for decades.

Getting working class people to vote against themselves and in favour of rule by new class of nobles has been a phenomenal success (and a social disaster).

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