Andrew Dickens Afternoons

Here we are in yet another Monday of decision and it seems that the powerhouse of Auckland is going to remain in lockdown longer yet as the long tail of Covid seems peskily hard to stamp out.
Another week, another billion down the drain. 
Once again last week I heard business advocates asking what's the plan to get out of this. 
Actually more accurately they want to know when. 
Well your guess is as good as mine. 
That's the funny thing about wars and pandemics and the weather. 
They don't follow arbitrary timelines as defined by humans. 
The thing is, there always has been a plan. 
The plan is get everybody vaccinated.  
Now I know that’s not much of a plan but that’s the plan.  
That’s the only option humans have.  
Get vaccinated or lockdown every time hospitalisations overwhelm the health system. 
It is a great pity the plan did not include the phrase “as fast as possible”.  
In the the historical reckoning that will be seen as the government’s greatest mistake.  
But it is fair to say we’ve sped up. 
Businesses want dates in the plan.  
Dates can come and go if we’re not vaccinated enough. 
There is no point telling businesses that we will have a retrenchment from lockdowns and a slow lifting of border control from March when March comes along and we're stuck on 60 percent vaccination rate. 
And that is my greatest worry.  
That we’re going to stall.  
That too many people are vaccine hesitant. 
In the USA their vaccination rate has stalled at 65 percent. 
That's not enough. 
Biden has got tough and is starting to implement no jab, no job policies.
So much for their freedoms. 
Our government has always tried to avoid mandates because people hate being told they have to do something.  
So why doesn’t businesses themselves step up to the plate?
Businesses need to be actively telling their staff that vaccinations are critical to their company's continued survival. 
This is not tiddlywinks. 
If we fail in our vaccination rate, it's lockdown for life, no matter who's in government. 
In particular, businesses need to be telling that to the vulnerable amongst their staff. 
And they also need be telling that to the hesitant, the reticent, the lazy and the ignorant. 
Which is why I found David Seymour's little race based stunt last week unbelievably short sighted and basically business unfriendly. 
It is in NZ businesses’ interest to get the vaccine to the hesitant and overlooked as soon as they can, not having politicians actively deride measures that may aid that goal. 
It was basic petty race politics that acted against business interests.  
But I expected nothing else from a career politician who has never worked a day in business in his life.

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It started on Friday.
First I saw my neighbour struggling down the street on crutches. 
He'd had a knee operation at a private hospital.
It was the last operation they did before lockdown he said. 
Then he added that the hospital was preparing itself for any overflow from the public system in the event of a surge of Covid cases. 
That's a worry I thought.
Later that night the tweets and social media posts from friends in the health system started.
Auckland and Counties Manukau were bracing for an increase in cases.
Staff were being sought from Waikato DHB.
Covid cases amongst the staff combined with a rise in hospitalisation was starting to stress the system.
It was a reminder what all our battles against Covid are about. 
Preventing a meltdown in healthcare.
We have 500 odd cases so far and 34 hospitalisations. 
Thats a conversion rate of around 7 per cent. 
Added to that the fact that our health system was at capacity even before an outbreak of Covid then we sit in a perilous place where the only option was lockdown. 
Or risking scenes like we had in New York and Italy last year.
It's a fact we've known all along. 
We have the second lowest number of ICUs per capita in the OECD. 
Half of Australia. 
A third of England and a whopping tenth of Germany.
We knew this 18 months ago. 
So add it to the list of fails along with slow vaccine rollout. 
That said, each ICU bed costs a million and takes a million a year to run and we don't have the nursing stock in any case.
This is the harvest we had reaped after decades of under investment in a health system while allowing massive population growth. 
Auckland has added 500,000 people since the last hospital upgrade.
I say this as middle aged mansplainers like Scott Morrison tell us that we can't live in a cave and learn to live with Covid. 
No kidding bucko. 
By the way your 2 biggest cities are living in caves. 
New South Wales for 65 days and Victoria for 28. 
Scott is full of empty slogans and broken promises.
I think we all know how to live with the virus. 
We need enough hospital beds, we need to be vaccinated and we need excellent contact tracing
We don't have enough beds already. 
We need to double or triple our capacity long term. 
Why we didn't prepare more temporary beds in the 169 day Covid free lull we had I'll never know.
We have vaccinated too slowly and we may indeed slow further if we run out of vaccine
And if our contact tracing was battle ready, why is it that we urgently hired 370 new tracers last Tuesday.
We are nowhere near being ready to live with Covid so our fate is to wait and lockdown until we are.

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A mother in the US has felt the wrath of parents worldwide after revealing on TikTok that she charges her 7 year old daughter rent to teach her the value of money.
Felicia Farley told TikTokkers, "every week my daughter has a list of chores. If those chores are completed daily, she will get $7 at the end of the week."
She then went on to say "In total she pays $5 for bills, leaving $2 left over which she can then keep and save or spend."
Andrew Dickens asked callers what they thought was appropriate for kids to do to learn the value of money.
LISTEN ABOVE

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So since I last spoke with you the Government have announced their plan to transition towards more open borders and Amazon have decided to pull the Lord of the Rings out of New Zealand.  
The 2 stories are linked. 
There are parts of Amazon’s reasoning that haven’t been widely reported.  
They’re moving to Shepperton Studios in England which is currently in major expansion mode.  
It’s merged with Pinewood Studios and now provides the second biggest studio in the world behind 1 in China. 
18 new sound stages have been built this year.  
Netflix has announced it’s putting a production hub in Shepperton taking productions out of Europe and North America.  
There’s talk that Amazon is about to take a stake in the studio. 
It also has to be remembered that Amazon’s Lord of the Rings is heavily dependent on studios.  
It’s being done with sets and CGI.  
So it’s no sweat to move the sets to England and keep going.
Then there’s an instant saving on cast cost. 
My point is that even if we were open and easy to get to the probability is that Amazon would still be on the move to a bigger, better and cheaper location. 
But having said that, the same Hollywood Reporter issue reports that productions of Bridgerton and House of Dragons have been closed down in the UK.  
Why? An outbreak of Covid in the cast and crew. And the productions are paused indefinitely. 
And here’s something to remember about the future. 
Even as nations, states and cities decide to live with Covid it does not mean that businesses will.
If Covid is present in a workplace then buisinesse in the UK are closing of their own volition. 
An outbreak of Covid that takes out your stars and your crew stops production just like that and  it costs a fortune to insure against. 
Andrew Lloyd Webber just closed his latest theatre production in London because of an outbreak.
He’s quoted as saying “Freedom Day has become closure day”.
Lord of the Rings might move and then stop.  
Something that didn’t happen while they were in New Zealand. 
So the simple fact is that the longer New Zealand remains Covid free the longer our advantage lasts. 
And while we remain lucky the best thing is to get your vaccinations as fast as possible. I’m tired of hearing the whole world say it’s our only defence and yet people still dilly dally.

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Firstly, my condolences to the people of Timaru and particularly the parents of the boys who lost their lives in the horrific incident. 
I’m not going to draw any conclusions from the particular event because I feel it’s too soon and the whole district is feeling it, as are we all. No one needs a radio host or talkback callers pontificating on the should have beens. 
But in the course of the conversation today we have heard talk on perception of risk and how poor it is in young brains. And that’s not the first time perception of risk has been mentioned over the past few days. 
We heard it from Sir John Key in the weekend.  He suggested that many New Zealanders had little perception of risk from Covid 19 because we have been spared the worst ravages of it and that may be why so much vaccination hesitancy exists. 
Why get vaccinated when there’s no Covid about.   
Sir John suggests that if New Zealanders were told the next stage of the plan which would include fewer lockdowns and more ease of travel then people might be incentivised to get the jab. 
Then there were Maori and Pacific Islander health professionals suggesting the uptake of vaccination is low amongst their people because the state hasn’t engaged with them and, again, there is no perception of risk because there is no Covid in the wild 
And a lack of perception of risk was blamed for our abysmal usage of the Covid 19 contact tracing app. 21 per cent of us have the app on our phone but don’t use it and another 20 per cent don’t have it at all.  No Covid in the community, no use of the app. 
This all defies common sense and logic.  
Get the vaccination and you’re one step closer to travelling and one step further away from lockdown. How anyone from any ethnicity doesn’t know what’s going down is baffling and it's too late to start vaccinating once the virus is running amok amongst your people.  And if you don’t start using the app until Covid is in the community then again it’s already too late and you’re a week behind the game, just ask New South Wales. 
All of this inaction because of a lack of perception of risk closely resembles wilful stupidity and threatens to wipe all the gains that have been made in this fight against an invisible enemy.

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This morning I was driving to work listening to Steve Price talking to Mike Hosking at 8.40am. 
It wasn’t a pleasant listen.  
What’s happening across the Tasman is a recurring nightmare.
A nightmare that somehow we have avoided so far. 
Lockdowns popping up like mushrooms.  
Case numbers growing and worrying hospitalisations. 
Two thirds of the new cases are under 40s.   
Of the 53 people in intensive care, six are in their 20s, four are in their 30s, one is in their 40s, 18 are in their 50s, 14 are in their 60s, nine are in their 70s and only one is in their 80s.  
So, so much for Covid being the disease of the old, frail and feeble. 
There are 203 people in hospital with Covid-19 in NSW.
Twenty-seven are ventilated.
Imagine that here where our ICUs are already at limit. 
Meanwhile lockdowns into October are being mentioned and the Australian treasure is warning this may create a second recession for the so called lucky country.  
Not a pretty picture. 
The question is how did Covid get into Australia?  
The common wisdom is through the border. 
So why has it not happened here with the exception of the Aussie tourist in Wellington? 
Despite numerous accusations that our border and MIQ is useless and not fit for purpose it appears to be better than Australia’s.  
But it does make it feel like one little slip and we’re in Aussie territory. 
For all of Scott Morrison’s brave words about plans and living with the virus, Australia has reverted to the tried and true because at the end of the day there are very limited ways to fight the virus. 
Lockdowns, social distancing and masks and vaccinations. 
Australia has proven to be bad at them all.  
Crowds at Bondi this weekend were the largest ever seen in winter.  
The Aussies just don’t seem to get it.  
And their vaccination rates are even worse than ours. 
But are we really that much better?  
Contact tracing app use here has fallen off the cliff.  
I asked a group of friends the other day to show me their diaries. 
One didn’t have the app all.  
Most hadn’t registered at a QR code in weeks. 
We’re not contact tracing.  
We’re slowly vaccinating.  
We’re complacent. 
Give me one reason why we’re not next.

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Sometimes I wonder how we have become the architects of so many bad administrative decisions. 
This is the story of British GP Ann Solomon which featured in the Sunday Star Times this weekend 
At the beginning of the pandemic New Zealand made some border exemptions to fill critical worker shortages 
Ann Solomon responded and has been living and working in New Zealand with her family since last August. 
But the temporary visa is running out and Ann Solomon’s family’s future hangs in the air. One of her children is just about to leave school and without the permanent residency will not be able to legally work here. 
Ann Solomon is not just a doctor, she’s also a woman and she’s living in Foxton. As a female rural GP she is in very high demand and is a very rare breed. She is not someone we can afford to lose. She’s not alone; there are 1129 other similar cases, many dating back to the Key Government. People who have made the effort, brought skills to the country, settled themselves and now facing an immigration reset that says thank you very much but there’s no place for you here. 
They’re in limbo because of the immigration reset and the very real chance that their application for permanent residency will be turned down. 
This is madness. These people are here, happy, housed and already vital to our economy.  Just let them stay.  
Ann Solomon’s case was in the paper yesterday. If I was the Immigration Minister, I would have come into the office today and said ‘get that woman a visa and get it now’. In fact I’d probably offer an amnesty for all since we can’t do without them and we’re not accepting any new immigrants in the near future.
Immigration Minister Kris Faafoi received advice about this in April. It’s nearly August and nothing. I wonder if Kris has too many portfolios to get anything meaningful done. 
It’s also not good enough to claim its covid’s fault, because it’s not. With no immigrants since last March there must be plenty of hands available to do the work. But also remember this is a government that came into power 4 years ago promising a wholesale cut in immigration so they might just be bloody mindedly committed to a short sighted policy 
This is analysis paralysis and a lack of direction and politically correct posturing. 
Give it up and give these new, New Zealanders some respect.

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In the aftermath of the farmer protests on Friday, some tempers have been running high as farmers allege city residents don’t understand them.  But in fact, there are many issues that should unite farming and city folk. 
As I drove in this morning, I heard a farmer on ZB claiming that city folk have no idea of the environmental regulation and the cost of compliance that the farming community have to bear. 
I thought that was a bit unfair. Currently Auckland Council is spending $1 billion dollars on the interceptor project which is to prevent wastewater from entering the watercourses that crisis across the city. That’s part of the costs of keeping rates high. 
Then there’s the story of the service station that’s being developed in my suburb.  This is a saga that has rumbled on for years.  The service station operator has now spent more than $500,000 on getting resource consents and will spend just about as much on environmental safeguards. 
City businesses will complain about compliance costs as much as any farmer. 
Meanwhile, I’m struck by the similarity between the issues of S.N.As and heritage protection. 
S.N.As are Significant Natural Areas on farming land that the authorities now want to register and protect. 
Farmers see this as a land grab.  It’s their land and they’ll do what they want with it. If farmers bought a block with a wetland in it they may have already factored in the draining of that land as part of the business plan. To have a council come along and say hands off would go down like cold sick. 
Of course, some farmers do it voluntarily with over 4700 covenants on Significant Natural Area already in place. And that’s the choice thing rather than the compulsion. 
In cities, there’s a similar but opposite argument.
New zoning is threatening heritage properties that could be redeveloped into higher density housing.
Battlelines are being formed particularly in older city suburbs to protect owners from councils imposing zoning laws on their land and neighbourhoods.  It’s a personal property right issue just like S.N.As are for farmers. 
It would be nice to see that as New Zealanders, whether in the country or the city there is more that unites us than divides us.

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So look at that: the Pfizer vaccines that we were freaking out about arrived. Not only that, they arrived two days early.
So what was all that panic about? We only knew about the potential delay because the Minister told us about it. So why do that?
It's because the government is becoming increasingly gun shy. Afraid of negative headlines, they are choosing to pre-empt the bad news to try and mitigate any possible damage. But in this case, they shot themselves in the foot unnecessarily.
The public perception is that this vaccine rollout is less than perfect and so the government is defensive.
When I said that on social media last week, many supporters of the roll out and the government took issue with me. Our roll out has a 107 per cent success rate, they said.
This is true. We are seven per cent ahead of schedule. But that means nothing if the schedule was too slow in the first place. The government is doing exactly what they said they would do but with hindsight we see that was not enough.
Today we learn that Oakland Zoo in the San Francisco region is currently jabbing their big cats, bears and ferrets. American ferrets are further ahead in the Covid queue than you and I and Australians. The zoo has the Pfizer that Australia and New Zealand doesn't have.
As I said last week, I have no idea why our two nations are being punished for our early success. When this is all done and dusted I want some answers without all the politics.
Speaking of Covid politics. Over the weekend the UK and Australia came out with their plans for a post Covid world joining other nations like Taiwan and Singapore. They all talk about learning to live with Covid
I've read the plans and they're full of common sense and little else. They're all dependent on 70-80 per cent vaccination rates which is when the herd immunity starts to kick in. All the plans fail to specify timelines.
I've also heard comment that these countries are ahead of us while we maintain a hermit kingdom stance.
But that's not fair. As Scott Morrison sees lockdowns and community cases he starts to talk non-specifically about the future to give some hope that this stuff will end. It is same with the other nations who are seeing the Delta variant have a flare up. Out of blue, Taiwan went from 6 cases a day to 600 at the beginning of June.
It's “look over there” Covid politics and nothing else.
Every nation is the world is hungry to reach 80 per cent vaccination. Australia and New Zealand are well behind. It would be great if Pfizer acknowledged that and took the Covid from the ferrets and gave it to us.

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Here we are with lockdown's popping up across Australasia. 
The Delta variant is causing some havoc amongst two nations universally praised for their handling of Covid over the past 16 months. Two nations who on the whole went hard and early and reaped the harvest of return. 
Much to the globe's jealousy, we opened one of the first and most successful travel bubbles. We've been smug about our full stadiums and enjoying concerts and the ability to keep a large part of our domestic economies functioning. 
But all that sways in the balance today. 
And one of the reasons our two nations are here is because we lag much of our comparable countries of the world in vaccinations. 
Much has been made that we are last of 122 OECD nations in the vaccination table, and that’s true, but the Prime Minister is also right when saying that table is based on the number of first shots given. 
On fully vaccinated figures, we do a little better.  As of this morning just 7.8 per cent of New Zealand has had two shots. The global average is 10.8 per cent.  Australia is way worse than us on that metric at 4.7 per cent there.  
It's irritating to look at the vaccination tables. England is at 48 per cent, the States at 46 per cent.  It's galling to see Sweden who launched into a failed herd immunity campaign sitting there with 26 per cent of their population fully vaccinated.
Even Brazil, a country with far inferior infrastructure and a leader who actively doubts Covid, is better than  us at 10.5 per cent. 
The countries that failed spectacularly a year ago are beating us now. 
How did we fell from first in line to last in the OECD?
When we ask our government, they say don’t worry, it’s all good.  We're ahead of the schedule but that's a pointless answer. We're ahead of a schedule that's behind everyone else's.
Ask many and they'll just say our government is useless. But why is Australia in the same boat, a boat that's leaking more than ours. 
It's a question I've grappled with. 
One theory is that since we've not had crisis level infections then vaccines have been provided to those counties that do. Australia and New Zealand are at the end of the supply chain. The drug companies are the quarter masters deciding our rations. 
Steve Price this morning said one of the causes of the vaccination delays was a cancellation of a vaccine shipment. We order it, we pay for it, it does not arrive. 
If this is the case, and I've spoken to people in the drug companies who say it is, then the real failure of both Australia and New Zealand's government is protesting against it. But perhaps they can’t as this will cause more delays.
It seems cruel that two of the only countries who actually followed the World Health Organisations advice are to be punished for that success. Particularly when our relatively small populations means the impact on vaccination supply globally would be negligible.

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