Covid Watch

How about KFC with the side of vaccinations? 
Auckland councillor Josephine Bartley has floated the idea of taking the vaccination buses to the takeaway queues from tomorrow to offer people the jab while they wait. 
She spoke to Heather du Plessis-Allan about whether the idea might take flight. 
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Alert Level Three is a welcome change for Auckland businesses -- but there's still a tough road ahead.
The region moves down alert levels from 11.59 tonight -- and with it comes the introduction of click and collect services.
Auckland Business Chamber chief executive Michael Barnett says businesses are over it.
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The elimination strategy is looking less and less viable.
There were 14 new cases in the community today, one not yet linked.
Experts agree the decision to ease restrictions in Auckland was a line call and fear numbers will track back upwards.
Melbourne Epidemiologist Tony Blakely says New Zealand is echoing events in Melbourne and New South Wales.
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Correction's top boss claims staff couldn't have stopped a remand prisoner being picked up with three people in the car.
The man was collected at Auckland's Mount Eden Prison and driven to his bail address in upper Waikato.
He later tested positive for Covid and has passed the virus onto four household members.
The Corrections Minister says the court rules were for one, specified family member to pick him up, but Parliament's heard the carload stopped four times on the way.
But Corrections Chief custodial officer, Neil Beale, says they have no say on who's allowed ins a private car.
He says they are interested in the person specified to pick them up - but they can't stop a mother, brother or friend from sitting in the back.
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So not a great time in the old lobby for my daughter yesterday. Needless to say, the predictions on the new MIQ system were right.
Call it anything you want, tinker with it, paint it, spin it, it remains what it always was. It's a mess that never really got set up, properly bogged down, and a classic supply-demand issue 
She started out 17,815th in the line. I suppose is the upside, or is it? Previously, you didn’t get a spot, and you had no idea whether you would or not. It was a blind crap-shoot. At least this way the profound misery of knowing you don't stand a hope in hell stares you in the face, as it turns out, for a period of several hours. 
Slowly, she moved up a bit. She got to 11,000th by the end as people drop out, dates are filled up, and rooms run to zero. And that was that, thanks for coming 
So, what have we gained out of this change? Essentially, nothing. It’s a lottery and how you pull the numbers from the ball in the lottery doesn’t really matter. If you have 3000 rooms and 27,000 people wanting them, it doesn't work. 
You’ve partially solved the refresh 100 times issue, I suppose. But beyond that, it's still dumb luck. And a system as important as this shouldn’t be running on luck alone. 
A points-based system would be an immeasurable improvement. It still wouldn’t be perfect, given our immigration system ran on it. Remember that? Immigration? It's where people with skills arrived in the country and industries weren't haemorrhaging because of labour shortages. 
Even under a points system, there was always a scrap about skills, pay rates, and who got better treatment, but at least there was a merit element to it. The Government don’t want a points system it seems for the simple reason, or excuse, that's it too complicated. As in too complicated for them to work out how to do it. 
Obviously, there is queue from the tech sector who would solve it by Thursday. So, the system is held hostage to a degree by a government that hasn’t got the slightest aspirational gene in its makeup. Nor, tragically, do they have the wherewithal to recognise that and ask for help. 
So, for the foreseeable, tens of thousands of New Zealanders are stuck, business is hamstrung, funerals are missed, and sports people can't make a living. There's a massive queue of misery and desperation. 
Of all the cock ups of this pandemic, behind the abject failure of an urgent vaccine rollout, MIQ would be the biggest. Their fix? A foe lobby followed by a numerical conformation of how screwed you are when you enter.

So they did it, they dropped us to level 3, which they were always going to, despite case numbers and mystery cases looking pretty much the same, if not worse, than they have the past two weeks.  
Which begs the question, what the hell have we been doing in level 4 all this time if that was the case? Have they suddenly woken up to the fact elimination is out of reach and we are changing tack? If so, why aren’t they just honest about it?  
I think I know why.  
This Government is about popularity. It’s about polling and focus groups and positive trending on Twitter. This decision yesterday was a political one. How can you explain it any other way? Never has ‘lockdown fatigue’ been such a big consideration. Why is it now? 
 Because Aucklanders were over it. They knew they’d lost the buy in, and keeping it going any longer would've been – God forbid – unpopular. So they’ve given us a breather. For how long? That’s the horrible question we don’t want to really ask.. how long ‘til the breather’s over and we’re back in Level 4? I’d hazard a guess not long. 
So in the interim, what have they done here? They’ve gone from telling us two weeks ago that Delta was bad and deadly and we need to absolutely lock down and stay indoors, only to now, with worse numbers, drop a level. People have every right to feel confused, angry, anxious and dicked around.  
The Government’s been disingenuous. This is nothing more than an abject abandonment of the elimination strategy. And here’s what’s so disingenuous about it.. they’re denying it. They’re spinning it, selling it through a ‘caring’ public health lens, knowing it’s entirely political. 
Which leads me to our neighbours and what I like about Australia. At least they’re honest. At least they call a spade a spade.   
At least they admit when they get it wrong, take the public with them, apologise for the stuff ups, and keep moving forward. 
Compare that to what we get here; spoken to like toddlers, lied to, spun yarns that suit the politics and the polls, and get dished up bare faced denials. All they can say is that no, this isn’t about abandoning elimination, no we are not worried about the Waikato cases, no we are not worried about our new MIQ booking system being a bust. All lies. 
As David Seymour said yesterday, “this Government makes a big show of following the science, there is no science [here]. It’s all politics.” He also said the Government needs to ‘get the rules of the game straight’. 
And that’s sadly the crux of it, this is a political game being played with us. 
It’s not about our wellbeing and survival, it’s about theirs.

Hopeful kiwis both here and abroad logged on early in the morning to register to go in the lottery only to see their number put somewhere in the 20 thousand range for only 3200 available MIQ spots. 
And only another 7000 rooms will be released before the end of the year.  
The queue got as high as 31,800, a pretty quick way to demoralise anyone who had any hope of getting home in the next few months when you see that number pop up on the screen.   
One of those people is Penny Smith - Penny and her husband are in Sydney and had a flights booked before the bubble burst and have been trying to get home ever since. 
Penny Smith joined Mike Hosking.
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Out in the big space that is the internet there is a lot of misinformation when it comes to Covid-19. 
But an investigation has revealed dozens of the world's biggest brands including Amazon, Nike, Ted Barker and ASOS have been advertising on websites that spread Covid-19 misinformation and conspiracy theories. 
The ads are helping fund these websites that include claims powerful people engineered the pandemic, and that vaccines have caused thousands of deaths. 
Investigative journalist Jasper Jackson joined Kate Hawkesby. 
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Auckland University's Des Gorman believes there has been a change in thinking. 
He says told Mike Hosking there's been a change in public opinion, and the Government has followed suit. 
"I think what we're seeing is a shift from a zero tolerance for cases to a shift zero tolerance for deaths, and I think that's going to shift even further still." 
Northern Hauraki is now under new restrictions, after three cases were found in Whakatīwai. 
The rest of the country will remain at Level Two, but the gathering limit has been increased to a hundred people. 
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Auckland University public health expert Colin Tukuitonga told Kate Hawkesby case numbers are too high to be easing restrictions. 
"I would have preferred the number of new cases to be in single digits and for our vaccination coverage to be ramped up even further.' 
New restrictions have been put in place around northern Hauraki, after three cases were found in Whakatīwai. 
The rest of the country remains at Level Two, but the gathering limit has been increased to a hundred people. 
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