Covid Watch

Which bit are we surprised about? Air New Zealand tells people to book early because fares are going up. Headlines scream how unhappy we are because fares are going up.

Be as unhappy as you want, things ain't changing.

We have a bit of experience around airfares at the moment. We have a family member looking to get home from Europe. The ability to get a seat, far less wince at the price, has been a problem for weeks.

We have another family member looking to get a partner here for Christmas. Unless they have $9000, it isn't happening. That, by the way, is America to New Zealand at Christmas.

What is happening is very simple and complaining about it solves nothing.

Christmas has always been a pricey time of year. Why we thought post -Covid might be different, I have no idea.

As regards Europe, we have sat on websites waiting for tickets to come up from cancellations. They do but they cost anywhere from $4000 to $12,000 and they are gone within minutes.

We booked a trip next year to the east coast of the United States. I won't tell you what it cost, but it's amazing.

But in that purchase is the key to all of this, very few people are forced to travel; most do it because they want to.

All we are dealing with here is a desire to do something and the psychological or emotional hurdle as to whether they can bear the cost.

Look up Alan Joyce's speech he gave last week about what is required to get a plane out of the desert. It's a lot of people, a lot of old equipment put on a scrap heap, with a lot of new equipment to replace it and a lot of hours of testing.

God knows what it costs, but it's months’ worth of work for one plane.

It's Economics 101, demand is outstripping supply. It's outstripping it by quite a lot. And if you believe Heathrow it will be several years before it's sorted.

Not a lot of people are actually flying. It's a year today since the borders opened for Australia. They are still 70 percent down on the number of trips they took pre-pandemic.

So, to be blunt, what you are hearing is complaining from people who have enough money to fly, but don’t like the fact it's no longer cheap.

Welcome to the new world order.    

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More people are finding it too difficult to care for pets amidst the cost of living crisis.

Three Auckland animal shelters are chokka and unable to take on any more dogs, due to the influx of people not being able to meet the needs of their pet.

Auckland Animal Management Leader Shaun Murray says while one dog door closes, another opens.

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Reserve Bank governor Adrian Orr says a full review of how the bank responded to the pandemic will be released next month.

NZ Herald business editor Liam Dann talked us through the review and gave us an idea of what it might cover.

The Reserve Bank has come under fire for their pandemic stimulus delivery, which may have contributed to present inflation levels. Liam Dann warned us this may have unfortunate implications going forward.

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Five New Zealand regions have seen their population fall over the last year, including Auckland, Wellington and Christchurch.

Overall, the national population grew just 0.2 percent in the last year.

Infometrics Principal Economist Brad Olsen explained why people were leaving the country in droves. The combination of Covid-19 and the living costs have made people want to seek out other opportunities.

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Today on The Huddle- Phil O'Reilly from Iron Duke Partners and former CEO for BusinessNZ and Ali Jones from Red PR joined us to talk about the following:

Another death at an E.D - this time a 4 year old boy, the way Grant Robertson says that it's sad and nothing more during today's post cabinet wasn't great. How do you feel when you keep hearing these stories?

Tesla owners are raking in the rebates! Does this annoy you?

Christchurch city council has heard absolutely nothing from the Government after voting down the housing intensification bill - what's the Government's plan here?

After the first round of cruise ships returned to the country with confirmed COVID-19 cases, do you plan on getting on a cruise anytime soon?

St. Bede's has had to put a stop to a themed dress up day which the kids were colloquially calling wife beater Wednesday - the school say they weren't told of the theme's name.

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An aim to do more than rid the health system of its patient backlog.

The Planned Care Taskforce has released 101 recommendations for improving equity, increasing access and reducing waiting times.

Chair Andrew Connolly says Covid's one of the main drivers for the expanding wait lists.

He says the recommendations are more long term than just fixing the current patient buildup.

Connolly says they're also designed to ultimately build a system that is far more resilient and can withstand these sort of problems, to keep delivering care in a more timely fashion.

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There's a consensus New Zealand came through the COVID-19 pandemic fairly well, but are there further consequences yet to come?

Compared to a lot of other countries our death rate was low.

Now we're open again and mostly back to work, and some interesting projections of what the post pandemic phase will look like are emerging.

The in-house actuary for insurance company Partners Life, Kate Dron, explained further.

"One of the issues we've still got now is that things are still revolving, and we've still got new variants coming through, and this is a whole different world for us opening up. It is still quite hard to get a grip of what's actually happening out there."

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Back to the Pfizer "scandal" and the "revelation" that Pfizer admitted it never tested its vaccine to work out whether it stopped transmission of Covid.

Like virtually all of these sorts of breathless revelations, the real story is not as simple as it seems. But in simple teams, what is claimed didn't happen. It is not the scandal those who think it is, want it to be.

In that is the key to this, like it is the key to so much of what swirls around our heads these days. Because of the astonishing level of disinformation, you can find a narrative that says pretty much anything you want it to say.

The trouble with that, if you don’t reference and cross reference it, you can end up down a rabbit hole. And the problem with rabbit holes is a lot of people like being down them. In other words, it's no longer about the facts or the truth, it's about you being able to say "look, look I was right, I told you so."

I tell you what; I have not seen anything like the vaccine reaction in my lifetime. Of all the things we have been exercised about, those that took the jab to heart lost their minds.

Making it more complicated or murky were the Government's propaganda attempts, and at times straight up and down lies when it came to roll out, approach, delivery, accessibility, and mandates. The whole Covid cluster.

It was at times a mess. Couple that with an angry mob mood and it was always going to be explosive.

But, at no point was it a conspiracy. Not that the conspiracy theorists will accept that. They will take their anger, fury, and newsfeeds to the grave with them. That is the saddest thing of all.

For some they have allowed this period to define them. Of all the things you could have fought for, lost your job for, and send a thousand emails to media outlets for, a jab seemed an odd choice.

There is no doubt the emotional and fear campaign promoted by this, and most governments, to get jabbed, to be a part of the team of five million, was designed solely to save their butts around a health system they didn’t get sorted in time.

There is no doubt in my mind the darkest of days with lockdowns, chasing women in Northland, and dobbing neighbours in that stood to close to each other was literally the definition of madness.

Most of us lost the plot and it was government driven from a so-called pulpit of truth.

But Clarke didn't have an ankle bracelet, the nanny isn't in Malaysia, Agenda 21 isn't what you think it is, BlackRock doesn’t own the whole world's media, and Pfizer hasn’t been busted.

If you don’t believe that, that’s cool you don’t have to. But the rest of us have moved on, and we are the better for it.    

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After two years of COVID-19 restrictions and people readjusting to working from home, there is now a surge in people returning to office environments. 

The number of vacant office buildings in New Zealand's three biggest cities is going down, highlighting that offices still hold an important role in workplace culture, despite concerns that the pandemic would eliminate them.

JLL's Head of Research, Gavin Read, explained further.

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Reassurance for the travel industry as the final pandemic travel requirement will be scrapped.

The New Zealand Traveller Declaration will no longer be needed to enter the country after the Government announced its winding down most of its Covid-19 powers - including rolling out lockdowns, MIQ and vaccine mandates.

Tourism Holdings Chief Executive Grant Webster told Mike Hosking dropping the deceleration is healthy momentum for the travel industry.

He says overseas shareholders have expressed travellers concerns about the declaration, so he's glad its gone.

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